
Class ^:Ki3^ 
Book.. .Cl22_ 



Ccpigl(t}|°. 



COPyHIGHT DEPOSm 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 



By 

WILLIAM W. GITTH, 

President College of 
the Pacific. 



Faith is an experiment which 
ends in an experience.— Inge. 



Cmcutttait r 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 

EATON AND MAINS. 



^ 






Copyright, 1912, bt 
Jennings and Gkaham, 



^ 



'£CI.A320152 



FROM WHOM I RECEIVED 

MY 
FIRST KNOWLEDGE 

OF 
SPIRITUAL VALUES 



PREFACE. 

The real values of life are spiritual. 
Every age seems to be materialistic in 
tendency. But this is an indication on the 
surface and does not represent the deeper 
conditions of human striving. Each era 
of civilization has had its ebb and jflow of 
spiritual endeavor. But there have always 
been heroic souls in every step of progress 
who stemmed the onrush of the material- 
istic. The flood-tide of faith has always 
returned. On this tide peoples and nations 
have gone forward. 

So in the individual life there is the fluc- 
tuation of spiritual desire and effort. It 
would seem at times that individual men 
had a surfeit of spirituality and deliber- 
ately turned to the materialistic. But the 
sea of faith in the human soul does not go 
out forever. It returns. And on the full 
ocean of the spiritual man really rides. 

5 



PEEFACE. 

As each age lias its great soul to bring men 
back and bold tbem to faith, so each in- 
dividual has an impulse which keeps him 
in the stream of the eternal. In the strug- 
gles of life we are only too truly brought 
in touch with the materialistic. But our 
calmer moods recall and establish the spir- 
itual. All men covet inward peace. In 
this desire they are spiritual far more than 
they appreciate, and if they are true to 
their religious instincts, they actualize 
spirituality even in their unconscious 
yearning for the good and abiding. 

Because we seem to be hurried on in the 
tide of the materialistic it is well to empha- 
size strongly the presence and the impor- 
tance of the spiritual. Any serious attempt 
to do this ought to add to the hope and 
constancy of human effort to realize the 
worthy. Young men and women, especially, 
should have the deeper aspects of life con- 
tinually set before them. They are inter- 
ested in the fundamental truths. Skep- 
ticism does not represent their real attitude 

6 



PREFACE. 

to things eternal. They are "unwilling 
rather than intentional doubters. They are 
often indifferent, it is true, to spiritual 
needs, but this fact is not so discouraging 
as it appears. They recognize that the 
faith of the fathers is still a living faith, 
and are far more ready to accept than re- 
ject this faith. They demand, however, 
that it be put into new forms and be in- 
terpreted in terms of to-day. 

To emphasize the vital nature of the 
spiritual is the purpose of the following 
essays. Stress is placed in each essay 
upon the deeper and abiding aspects of life. 
Further than in this stress no especial con- 
secutiveness of thought is claimed for the 
essays. They are published with the hope 
of adding to the material which helps to 
create and strengthen faith. 

William W. Guth. 

San Jose, Cat., January 21, 1912. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

I. "Seek Ye My Face," - - - 13 

II. Giving What We Have, - - 21 

III. The Perils of Popularity, - 30 

IV. Limiting God, - - - - 42 
V. Peace Within, - - - - 52 

VI. Transfiguration and Slumber, 64 

VII. Honest Differing, - - - 77 

VIII. Hiding from Jesus, - - - 91 

IX. In Sight of the Promised Land, 104 

X. Round-about Ways of God, - 115 

XI. The Widening Universe, - 127 

XII. Evening and Morning, - - 141 

XIII. Every Man to His Own House, 155 

XIV. The Incarnation of Ideas, - - 170 
XV. The Touch of Faith, - - 187 

9 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 



I. 

SEEK YE MY FACE. 

* * Seek ye My face. ' ' Tlie Almiglity wrote 
this invitation on every page of Scripture. 
With the same hand He penned the warn- 
ing, ^*My face shall not be seen, for there 
shall no man see Me and live. ' ' Here we 
stand before a puzzling contradiction. And 
we find no solution when we look away 
from God 's word to His act. Nature in all 
her moods cries to us, **Seek ye my face." 
We confidently accept the invitation, and 
then are met with the rebuff, *^My face 
shall not be seen." 

The sun, making all nature laugh and 
sing, calls out, **Come to see me." We go 
to the door and knock. A defiance is hurled 
at us from the other side, *^Go away, you 
can not see me, my face is too terrible for 
your eyes." The stars twinkle, and each 

13 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

laughingly flaunts the challenge down, 
*^Seek ye my face." Out into space we 
project ourselves, and boldly grasp at in- 
finitude. But the stars mock us. '*You 
may measure the distance by which we are 
separated from you, you may fix the time 
of our coming and going, you may trace 
our steps as we run through space, but you 
can never know us." The flower smiles at 
us and seems to be saying, **Seek ye my 
face." We respond; and then it coyly 
draws a veil over its face and says, ' * Thou 
shalt not see me." We pluck it, we hold 
it in our hand or under the microscope. 
But it defies us. '^You may tear me apart 
and classify me, but my face you shall 
never see." 

We turn to truth. Again we hear the 
cry, **Seek ye my face," and again the 
veil immediately covers truth. We pur- 
sue our quest, **a thousand glimpses win," 
but never see the whole. Oft with Pilate 
we are tempted to say, **What is truth?" 
making bold, in the impatience of our pes- 

U 



SEEK YE MY FACE. 

simism, to sug-gest that there is no tnitli; 
that what seems to be truth and to whose 
call we can not shut onr souls, is nothing 
but a mirage. And yet we seek on. The 
forces of nature blindfold us. Clasping 
hands and forming a circle, as in the play, 
they enclose us within and call out, ** Truth 
is there; catch and hold it." So we cry, 
* ' Truth, where art thou ! ' ' Truth answers, 
*^Here I am." We grope about, calling, 
*^ Where! Where?" Truth answers gayly, 
now in front, now at our side, now at some 
distance off, now in our very ears, *^Here, 
here ! ' ' But the forces of nature laugh at 
our antics as we try to catch and hold 
truth, and free ourselves from the blind- 
fold. 

We should remain in hopeless perplexity 
if we insisted upon our quest. We go back, 
rather, to the psalmist and hear his state- 
ment further: **When Thou saidst, Seek 
ye My face ; My heart said unto Thee, Thy 
face, Lord, will I seek." There is here 
no indication that the psalmist expected 

15 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

to find the face of the Lord, and no thought 
that he would be disappointed did he not 
find it. There is simply the response of 
the psalmist's heart to the command of 
his God. His life-given task is to seek, 
his duty obedience. 

Here we have a real answer to the many 
questions we are continually asking. What 
is life? To attain to a certain end, or 
while living, to live? Lessing has a bold 
word when he says: **If Almighty God 
should come to me and with outstretched 
hands offer me in His right hand Truth 
as a perfected and finished whole, and in 
His left hand the desire after truth with 
the condition that I would continually be 
misled in my search for it, and should say 
to me, * Choose thou between these two,' 
I should with humility fall before Him 
and, reaching toward His left hand, say, 
'Father, give me but the desire for truth; 
pure truth is for Thee alone.' " On to 
whatever path our quest may lead us, the 
goal, if we are striving to live, will be 

16 



SEEK YE MY FACE. 

truth. But it is not trutli as such, to quote 
Lessing again, which any man possesses 
or thinks he possesses which constitutes 
the true worth of a man, but the conscien- 
tious pains he puts forth to get behind the 
truth. So it is not life which any one 
possesses or thinks he possesses that con- 
stitutes the true essence of joy, but the real 
pains one puts forth in his desire to live. 
**Seek ye My face.'* The heart accepts 
the invitation ; it takes up the task of liv- 
ing and finds the delights and true worth 
of life. It is when the head comes down 
and says to the heart, *^0 you foolish little 
creature, struggling away at something 
you can never attain to," that the heart 
becomes sick and faint and would give up. 
But there is something in the constitution 
of the heart that will not be baffled ; instead 
of being routed by the head, it more often 
comes to the aid of the head and helps it 
over many a difficulty. As we often see 
a frail woman struggling against great 
odds to maintain herself and her little 

17 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

ones, lift herself up trimnphantly and suc- 
ceed simply because of the strength that 
lies at the very soul of her being, so do we 
find the heart breaking through all ob- 
stacles, righteously exultant, saying, **I 
will seek, for by seeking I shall live," 

Or, to change the figure : The little tug- 
boat plying the harbor receives meekly the 
taunts of the ocean liner as it sails in from 
its long voyage of conquest in foreign 
waters. ^^Get out of my way, you little 
boat! I sail the broad ocean, I touch at 
distant shores, the whole world is mine. 
What do you know about life? Cease 
puffing away and trying to be pretentious. ' ' 
But sometimes it happens that the great 
hulk of fifteen or twenty thousand tons 
gets stranded or is thrown upon the rocks ; 
and, if it is to be helped at all, it is by 
the little tug which comes alongside, throws 
over the rope, hitches to, and pulls it out 
into its element once more. So the head 
may say to the heart, ' ^ I sail on the broad 
ocean of thought, I touch at all the foreign 

18 



SEEK YE MY FACE. 

shores of knowledge, you know nothing 
about my life, get out of my way, let me 
have full and free scope." But does the 
head never become stranded, is it never 
left high and dry on the rocks or in the 
sand until the little, faithful, plodding 
heart — the heart that never sails the ocean 
of thought, but remains at home attending 
to the commonplaces of life — comes and 
pulls it out into sailing water again? 

To the heart the words, **My face shall 
not be seen," have no meaning; the heart 
simply goes on seeking and finding God. 
To the mind the words, ' ' Seek ye My face, ' ' 
are ever puzzling, because the face seems 
always to be hidden. If we begin the 
quest for God with the heart we shall be 
rewarded ; if we begin it with the mind God 
will draw a veil over His face. This is 
God's way. We must submit. But He 
has not left or ever will leave us comfort- 
less. **Seek and ye shall find," was not 
a vain word of the Master. Following 
Him we look into the inner recesses of our 

19 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

being, and observe that the heart life is 
the only true life. By no means do we 
discard the mind. We use it, we develop 
it to its very highest capacity. But we do 
not try to divorce it from the heart. What 
God hath joined together we do not put 
asunder. We teach mind and heart to live 
together in happy unity, and find the es- 
sence of life not in perfect knowledge, but 
in worthy action. 



20 



n. 

GIVING WHAT WE HAVE. 

The lame man at tlie Gate Beautiful asked 
Peter for what lie did not have. Peter 
gave him what he had. He might have 
walked by, saying, **I should like to help 
the poor man, but I have nothing to give 
him. ' ' He asked himself, * * How can I help 
this cripple 1 ' ' And what he found he could 
give was more than what he had been asked 
for. Thus we walk by the gates beautiful 
of life and see men and women longing to 
enter in, but who can not because they are 
crippled. 

Here is a man or woman with a narrow 
outlook upon life, lacking in high and noble 
aspirations, drawn along in the current of 
the commonplace to the maelstrom of ob- 
livion. The life was morally or intellectu- 
ally crippled from birth. It brought with 
it none of the rich endowments of a parent- 
age so essential to a proper start in life. 

21 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

The home surroundings were neither in- 
spiring nor elevating. The child grew up, 
walking on moral or intellectnal crutches. 
It had never had the real freedom of its 
limbs. 

We are not to think of such an one as 
particularly vicious and necessarily a can- 
didate for the workhouse. There are many 
criminals who could have been saved had 
the hand of sympathy and love been 
reached out to them in time and had they 
been bidden to rise up and walk. We see 
such before us every day. They ask too 
often for money. Modern society is obli- 
gated as never before to hear their cry. 
But money is not what they so much need. 
They need rather to be lifted to their feet 
and given a chance to move on into the 
temple of life. The rich, red blood of their 
infinite and hidden capacities must be 
stirred in their veins and set to flowing. 

Here is a young man who ought to have 
a college education. He has hardly had a 
common schooling. While he has a certain 

22 



GIVING WHAT WE HAVE. 

amount of ambition, if left to himself he 
will aim for something lower than for 
that he is capable of. His parents do 
not appreciate the need of his training. 
Even if they did they would not have the 
money to pay for his education. Neither 
have we any money to give him. And yet 
he is a cripple and needs our help. What 
we can give him is an enthusiasm for learn- 
ing and culture. We can urge him to read, 
we can open up the stimulating fountains 
of literature, we can bring him to a knowl- 
edge of the great men and things of the 
past, of the world movements of the pres- 
ent and future. We can make his latent 
powers throb and pulsate, and in so doing 
enable him to stand upon his feet. He will 
then proceed to earn an education. Our 
one-candle power, all we had, perhaps, will 
have become a searchlight in him, sending 
out its white pathways over every range 
of darkness. 

Or here is another whose sense of the 
great and noble in life is not developed. 

23 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

From birtli the faculties of appreciation 
of the beautiful and good have been allowed 
to remain inactive. He is crippled. An 
essential part of his organism is shriveled 
up and deadened. And nobody is deeply 
concerned about the necessary cure. As 
the lame man was carried every day to the 
Beautiful Gate that he might ask for alms 
when he needed sound limbs, so this one 
is offered almost everything except what he 
needs. We, by birth and training, may- 
hap, have the stimulant he requires. Our 
ideals are high ; we have traveled, perhaps, 
and have become acquainted with peoples 
and lands; we have seen the greatest 
works of nature and art; we have read 
widely, cultivating an inborn taste for the 
best in literature. Or we may have never 
been away from home and yet have de- 
veloped the highest and deepest instincts 
of the worth of man, and acquired the 
ability to point others to the appreciation 
of their true needs, and to awaken their 
sense of the sublime and eternal. What 

24 



GIVING WHAT WE HAVE. 

we thus have we can give to the man of low 
ideals. As we touch the springs of his 
life the channels of his better self will be- 
come filled, an infusion of power will 
quicken his wasted faculties, he will be able 
to rise and stand upon his feet. We gave 
him what we had and it made him whole. 
A love of flowers or birds may seem a 
small possession to the busy merchant or 
professional man. And yet if he can share 
his enthusiasm with another, wholly lack- 
ing in response to the delights of nature, 
he will open a new world for that other. 
There are men who have become morally 
and aesthetically crippled as they have pur- 
sued the hard game of life. What they 
need is not what they ask for — ^more money 
and power in business life — but a touch of 
nature, an idea of the beautiful, a sound of 
the sublime. Fields and flowers, paintings 
and statues, the voice of the singer, the 
combined harmony of the orchestra — ^these 
are unknown to them. The very best side 
of their natures is shrunken and lifeless. 

25 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

When they reach out their hands to ns for 
greater business opportunity, larger finan- 
cial gain, we do not have it to give them. 
What we have, however, we need not hesi- 
tate to bestow ; nay, it is our duty to give. 
For it is a miracle working power, it will 
make them whole, they will stand on their 
feet and shout for joy, a part of their lives 
hitherto unknown to them will have been 
opened up, they are reborn. 

Or we have faith in the great verities 
of life. Our hopes are large, our spiritual 
reach long. We have the faculty for be- 
lieving and not the tendency to doubt. We 
are not bothered so much about logic when 
we enter the religious realm as about life. 
We accept everything that makes for life, 
even although as yet we are not able to re- 
solve it in the crucible of thought. We 
see things beyond the ordinary range of 
sight, we hear voices not audible in the 
clangor of dissenting opinions. But there 
are others about who are weak in their 
faith, they can see only at short range 

26 



GIVING WHAT WE HAVE. 

and believe only what tliey see. They are 
crippled. What they lack we can supply. 
Not as though we should feel intellectually 
, or spiritually superior to them and thus 
seek to minister to them, but by letting 
them share our faith and hope, imparting 
to them the largeness of our spiritual 
views, until they see that the rigor and 
vigor of logic is a crutch to help a lame 
man along, but not necessary to one who 
approaches life through the door of faith. 
They will become able to adjust their faith 
to reason and will not try to reason their 
way to faith. They will stand upon their 
feet and walk as the deepest needs of their 
intellectual and spiritual natures demand 
they should. 

Here are a few of the ways in which we 
can help this world along and bring our 
fellow-beings into a better understanding 
of themselves and of the universe. What 
the world needs to-day is not more knowl- 
edge or more wealth or more comfort or 
more luxury. We are surfeited with these. 

27 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

What our brother is yearning for is sym- 
pathy and helpfulness. Not giving what 
we do not possess, borrowing it perhaps 
and going bankrupt, morally and spirit- 
ually. But giving what we have, believing 
in its miracle working power, and acting 
upon our belief. 

This is the gospel of Jesus. If we pro- 
fess to follow the Christ this is our gospel. 
It is a workable gospel. It supplies an 
every-day need. Every man can apply it, 
some more in one way, some more in an- 
other. 

And we shall be called upon frequently 
to test our gospel when it seems more im- 
portant to do something else. Peter and 
John were going into church. The hour 
for the service had arrived. Their duty 
surely lay in this direction rather than to 
help one of the numerous beggars who 
crowded the Gate Beautiful. He would be 
there after the service ended. They could 
help him then. But no. The teaching of 
Jesus made even the Church service sec- 

28 



GIVING WHAT WE HAVE. 

ondary to the helping of a fellow-man when 
the opportunity offered. 

Or Peter might have given the man 
money for his physical needs. It is easy 
for some to help humanity with gold or 
silver. But this would not have been suf- 
ficient. The personal touch, the intimate 
sympathy, would have been lacking. The 
man would have had to come again and 
ask for more alms. To avoid this he must 
be helped so that he could rise and help 
himself. Only as Peter gave of the power 
which the Christ had bestowed upon him, 
could he help the man. Some power of 
this kind has been bestowed upon every 
one of us ; we do not know to what degree 
until we test its strength. It is a spiritual 
possession, not a material; and will work 
a miracle where silver and gold would be 
ineffective. 

Giving what we have and by so doing 
discovering powers we did not think we 
possessed — this is the message we learn 
at the Gate Beautiful. 

29 



m. 

THE PERILS OF POPULARITY. 

The events of Passion Week lie before 
us as the events of any other period of his- 
tory, and we can review them from begin- 
ning to end. It was not so in the case of 
Jesus' disciples as they stood on that first 
Palm Sunday, the center of a tremendous 
outburst in recognition of Jesus' Kingship. 
For the disciples, doubtless, the struggle 
and disappointment of Jesus' ministry 
were at an end. Now He was accepted a^ 
Israel's King; soon He would be crowned 
and sit on David's throne. 

Not so Jesus. He understood the mul- 
titude. He knew what were the perils of 
this sudden popularity. If we watch Him 
closely as He allows the crowd to honor 
Him we shall see how little He was in- 
fluenced by the circumstance. The events 

30 



THE PERILS OF POPULARITY. 

of His short ministry showed Him gradu- 
ally but unmistakenly what He must ex- 
pect at the hands of His own people. And 
we may well believe that in the very midst 
of Palm Sunday He could see His Geth- 
semane. The shouts of ^^Hosanna, hail to 
our King," brought the echo, *^We have 
no king but Caesar; crucify Him! crucify 
Him ! ' ' The enthusiastic crowd about Him 
as He entered the city in triumph, indicated 
only the howling mob that would be about 
Him as He left it in disgrace. The honor 
bestowed upon Him as He was placed upon 
the King 's animal and conducted along the 
decorated highway to the courts of the 
Temple brought only the picture of the 
via dolorosa and of His staggering under 
the weight of His own cross. The shadow 
of Calvary was already on the brow of 
Olivet, and the gloom of Good Friday cast 
its solemnity backward over Palm Sunday. 
Jesus has the distinction as none other 
has of pointing the way for man. When 
He said, *^I go to prepare a place for 

31 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

you," His words had a very practical 
meaning. He goes before man in the wil- 
derness of life and blazes the way for him. 
If man has shown great ingenuity and deep 
insight and gone far along unknown ways 
leading his fellow-men in truth and dis- 
covery, he always finds that Jesus has been 
before him. His footsteps are found on 
every roadway of human experience, and 
he who runs, if he will, may read them. 
He could not be fooled by the mere ex- 
igency of human events. He saw deep into 
the meaning of things and could not be 
misled by any fortuitous circumstance. 

The career of a man must be laid in the 
concrete of his own character. And char- 
acter must be founded upon the deep un- 
derlying truths of nature. These are not 
found on the surface. Man comes to them 
only by discernment, and discernment is 
the result of closely following the distinc- 
tions between morals and conduct, between 
desires for things that are temporary and 
things that are lasting, between popularity 

32 



THE PERILS OF POPULAEITY. 

with the public approval and actions which 
are right, whatever may be the opinion 
of the public. 

So Jesus on Palm Sunday was not in 
any way taken by surprise. He had read 
the heart of His own people truly. They 
were so enmeshed in the present that they 
could not see the trend of events. He had 
already chided their leaders for being un- 
able to read the signs of the times. Events 
of to-day had no significance for them in 
the light of to-morrow. They could not 
see that conduct, which was not right, 
could never run on lines which would 
converge in truth and goodness. They 
could not understand that a point gained 
to-day would be of no value to-morrow, 
unless the point was rightly gained and had 
abiding significance for the future. Es- 
pecially were they absolutely unable to see 
that a Jewish king on Caesar ^s throne 
would not solve their problems or lessen 
their burdens, but would only aggravate 
the desire of Rome to control them and 
^ 33 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

bring upon them a more powerful army 
and a more determined intention to sub- 
jugate tbem. Their only safety and their 
peace and prosperity lie in the elevation 
of the King of righteousness on the throne 
of David, and the perpetuation of His 
Kingdom by lives of purity and goodness. 
For this they were not ready. Jesus knew 
the mind of the crowd and saw even in 
those crying so enthusiastically for Him 
the fickleness which would cause them to 
desert Him. 

The popularity of Jesus on Palm Sun- 
day, therefore, was only the forerunner of 
His crucifixion on the following Friday. 
He is marked as the Man of Sorrows even 
on the day of His greatest outward tri- 
umph. This very fact is another indica- 
tion of how Jesus met the hard realities 
of life and lived the experiences which 
every man who gains popular applause 
must make. He had the keen ear to distin- 
guish the divergent waves in the shouting. 
And long before the approving voices had 

34 



THE PERILS OF POPULARITY. 

ceased, He caught tlie faint but louder 
growing echoes of dissent. He would not 
court popularity. That was for children, 
not for men; especially for a man with a 
destiny. For the world will little note nor 
long remember what men do that gains 
them applause; it will take account only 
of their lasting benefit to humanity. And 
this the present generation can never ap- 
preciate. We are too near the facts. As 
we can not see the hands of the clock go 
round, so are we unable to discover history 
in the making. Only time reveals it. 

The saying that no man is great until 
he is dead is true, because not until he 
has passed away can his acts be estimated 
calmly and without prejudice. Jesus de- 
clared the same truth when He said, **A 
prophet is not without honor except in his 
own land and among his own people." 
For in his own land there are too many 
vying with him for the supremacy, and 
from the plateau of the present the low 
peaks of rivalry hide the high summit be- 

35 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

yond. And among his own people he is 
too well known. His greatness is hidden 
by the multiplicity of little things his 
friends and acquaintances know about him. 
Emerson has said, ** Heaven sometimes 
hedges a rare character about with un- 
gainliness and odium, as the burr that pro- 
tects the fruit." It would seem that all 
the great men have been buried in their 
day by the very familiarity of their lives 
which should have disclosed their great- 
ness. We wonder why it is that Lincoln 
made so little impression on the leaders of 
his day and that his almost superhuman 
dealing with the problems of his time was 
not recognized. Doubtless a rare charac- 
ter must be hedged about so that the pop- 
ulace will not recognize his greatness and 
lead him to his doom by popular acclaim. 
History makes account of many a man who 
had the marks of greatness upon him, but 
who was spoiled for any real service to his 
people and time because of premature 
praise that was bestowed upon him. 

36 



THE PERILS OF POPULARITY. 

One of the consequences of greatness is 
to be misunderstood and maligned. There 
were those in Jerusalem on that Palm Sun- 
day who were asking themselves, without 
prejudice, whether Jesus really was the 
leader which the prophets declared was to 
come. He truly was great. He had a won- 
derful influence over the public, none dis- 
cerned truth as He did and none taught 
so convincingly. Yet they were in doubt 
as to His true greatness. They wagged 
their heads and were ready to look for 
weakness rather than strength. So men of 
commanding prominence to-day must meet 
the criticism of the public. *^Yes, he is a 
great man; but still he is not doing any- 
thing so wonderful. See the mistakes he 
has made. They surely indicate a con- 
stitutional weakness." The approval of 
the public is as uncertain as a spring 
day, and may change without warning 
into fierce onslaught. Even those who 
were nearest to Jesus all through His min- 
istry deserted Him in the end and by their 

37 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

conduct showed they had lost faith in His 
greatness. A big man is always more in 
danger of being hit than a small man ; and 
one who is doing many things offers more 
chances for attack than one who is keeping 
his hands folded. In the incidents of 
Palm Sunday and Good Friday we learn 
the fate that must necessarily come to him 
who would carry the burdens of humanity 
and advance the cause of his fellows. 

The futility of striving for popular ap- 
proval, therefore, is evident. A man who 
is more ready to ask what will win favor 
than what would be right has none of the 
marks of leadership upon him. For a 
season the praise of his fellows will ring 
in his ears. But the noise will soon cease 
and in the silence which follows his name 
will not be heard. The term ** opportun- 
ist, ' ' applied to a leader of a party or other 
organization, stigmatizes a man beyond 
recognition of his better qualities. This 
word first came into use in France about 
the year 1783 and characterized the party 

38 



THE PERILS OF POPULARITY. 

of concession, tlie party that would bow 
to public clamor, waiting for an opportu- 
nity to act in favor of the public wish. So 
the word means the leader who will not 
urge upon others his principles or beliefs 
unless the occasion be opportune, and 
hence characterizes him as one without 
settled principles or consistent policy, one 
who holds his ear to the ground to ascer- 
tain what the public in superficial clamor 
wants. Nature is not governed by chance, 
but by law. Mankind is steadied in the 
conflict of opinion by the leaders who rule 
according to principle and not opportunity. 
It has been well said that ** modem poli- 
ticians are for the most part no longer 
men trained from their youth in the phi- 
losophy of government, but opportunists 
who view politics as a field for seK-ad- 
vancement." Such an one will always 
look for popular favor; public applause 
will be to him the indication that he Is 
meeting the wishes of the people; he will 
be unable to read the signs of the times and 

39 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

discover how soon the public will turn him 
down. 

So there have been opportunists in lit- 
erature, in education, in the Church. The 
reproach of authorship to-day is that men 
are ready to sell their talent for what 
they think the people want, rather than 
give them what they know they ought to 
have. We call such literature cheap and 
would not be disturbed by it were it not 
that an undiscriminating public will grab 
for this sort of reading matter. But we 
are consoled by the fact that such stuif 
has no abiding value and writers thereof 
soon sink into oblivion. Men have striven 
for results in education and religion when 
they were convinced that they were doing 
the best that could be done under the cir- 
cumstances. And this kind of opportune 
ism has a certain justification. But it can 
never take the place of the broad prin- 
ciples which center in truth and right, and 
which must always prevail because they 
have the future as well as the present 
in mind. 40 



THE PERILS OF POPULARITY. 

He who would lead men must carry their 
burdens. This means the cross. Unless 
he is able to ride down Olivet on Palm 
Sunday and not be turned from duty be- 
cause of popular applause, he will shrink 
from walking the steeps of Calvary on 
Friday amid the jeering crowd. To that 
extent he will fail. History will never 
say of him, **He saved others, himself 
he could not save." The verdict will be, 
*'In trying to save himself he became 
self -centered and could not see beyond the 
horizon of his own interests." Jesus was 
never in peril on account of popularity 
because He never could allow Himself to 
regard applause as approval. He coveted 
neither the one nor the other, but only 
to do the will of Him who sent Him. He 
could afford, therefore, to lose His own 
life in saving others. 



41 



IV. 

LIMITING GOD. 

The psalmist, in describing tlie attitude of 
the children of Israel toward God as they 
were being led from Egypt to Canaan, 
said, **Yea, they turned back and tempted 
God, and limited the Holy One of Israel/' 
They criticised imfavorably, they grum- 
bled, they rebelled. And so this writer, 
with a keen insight, records his judgment, 
that in so acting the Israelites limited 
God, and thus held Him from doing all 
that He otherwise could have done. 

As soon as our attention is called to 
this fact, we appreciate its importance. 
In the conduct of the children of Israel we 
recognize the conduct K)f mankind gen- 
erally. In ourselves, as individuals, we 
see how we shorten the hand of God and 
force Him at times to throw His blessings 

42 



LIMITING GOD. 

at us with difficulty, rather than let Him 
hand them to us naturally and gently. 

One of the incomprehensible features of 
man's nature is his unwillingness to take 
the best of life there is as it is offered to 
him freely. There is at once a certain 
rebellion against leadership of a higher 
kind, and an inability to see beyond im- 
mediate circumstances to the greater good 
that is to be attained in the future. Both 
these traits are splendidly illustrated in 
the conduct of the Israelites as they jour- 
neyed through the wilderness. They did 
not appreciate Moses' leadership. They 
rebelled against it, they tempted him, they 
provoked him, until finally his powers were 
limited. Furthermore, they could not look 
beyond their immediate present. They lost 
sight of the land — of which they had a 
good account — flowing with milk and 
honey, and murmured concerning the meat 
and drink with which God was daily pro- 
viding them. The freedom and the pros- 
pects of the promised land were forgotten 

43 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

in the necessary hardships of the desert. 
Many said, **Let ns go back to Egypt and 
the taskmasters ; we were better off there.'' 
The trouble with the Israelites was that 
they did not have full confidence in their 
God. They entertained low and circum- 
scribed notions of His power and goodness 
and faithfuhiess. They limited Him. And 
this is what men have always done. We 
need only glance over the development 
of learning to see how true this is. In 
science and philosophy men have not been 
able to get along without God. However 
independent they have become at times, 
they have never been able to make man- 
kind believe there is no God in and through 
and of all things. But science and phi- 
losophy, while not able to do without God, 
still have persisted in limiting Him. Some 
tell us that God's function was simply to 
start this world agoing, but that thereafter 
He had no proper office, either in or out- 
side the world. And could these men find 
the fact of creation in some force outside 

44 



LIMITING GOD. 

of God — and some even have hopes of this 
— they would not have given the Creator 
any place whatever in His universe. 
Others make a hard and fast distinction 
between natural and supernatural, but give 
reality only to the natural, and hence claim 
that only the natural laws and movements, 
as we know them, can be considered by 
any intelligent man. The supernatural 
they would call miraculous, and everything 
which must be attribued to the miraculous 
they consider nonsense. 

Now we are perfectly willing to let the 
distinction between the natural and super- 
natural go. It is better that it should, for 
all of God's movements are natural. If 
something seems to us to be contrary to 
nature, we ought neither to say that it 
could not have happened nor that it hap- 
pened according to the supernatural. For 
in both cases we should be limiting God to 
a sphere of knowledge and power only 
known to us. We would confine God's 
knowledge in the limits of our own. To 

45 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

say, for example, that Jesus could not have 
healed a lame man or caused a blind man 
to see, because this would be contrary to 
nature, is simply to say that we know all 
the laws of nature, and that no laws of 
nature exist that we do not know. And 
yet we are discovering new laws of nature 
every day. And when these are discovered 
we do not say they never existed before. 
No man, however else he would limit God, 
has declared this. Not the man of science 
or philosophy, therefore, but the eternal 
God is the judge of what we call natural 
law. And when we try to limit His sphere 
or power, the heavens shall have us in de- 
rision, for we only shall have exhibited our 
own limitations. 

Not only in His power do men seek to 
limit God, but also in His goodness and 
faithfulness. God is good when all is well 
with us. But calamity, misfortune, sick- 
ness, death, change the attitude of many 
towards the Father. How hard the heart 
may become, how harsh the word, how cyn- 

46 



LIMITING GOD. 

ical and pessimistic the expression and de- 
meanor! We ttius set a limit to the good- 
ness and faithfulness of God; we declare 
He is not perfectly good, or He would not 
have done so and so ; we pronounce against 
His constancy because this or that event 
did not happen as we thought it would or 
should. We are like the Children of Israel 
who did not have full faith in their God. 
And so out of circumstances immediately 
about us, out of our daily disappointments 
and trials, we build a barrier around us 
and limit God to this circumference, not 
realizing that His purpose is an eternal 
one, that His eye and mind and will com- 
prehend all space and time and proce&s, 
and that He operates only to bring man 
into a closer union and fellowship with 
Him and to bless him for evermore. 

Man sets a limit to God's power and 
goodness, denies that He is omnipotent, 
doubts whether He is all-loving and con- 
stant. But God in no way is affected by 
this; He goes on exerting His power and 

47 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

exhibiting His goodness. There is no limit 
to either. He is the Eternal Source, the 
wise and loving Distributor of both. 

And yet, while man can not limit God in 
His power and goodness, can not weaken 
the one nor lessen the other, he can limit 
God in His action. ** Yea, they turned back 
and tempted God and limited the Holy One 
of Israel.*' 

Man limits God because of unbelief in 
Him. One might deny the power of the 
sun, and yet the sun would in no wise be 
limited. But he might close up his doors 
and windows, shut out even the tiniest ray 
of light, and live in a dank and unwhole- 
some air. So to deny the existence of God 
does not affect God in any way. But un- 
belief of this kind is the shutting of the 
souPs doors and windows, refusing to let 
God 's light and air brighten and invigorate 
and warm the soul so that it can live and 
move in its appointed sphere. 

We read that Jesus did not many mighty 
works in His own country, because of the 

48 



LIMITING GOD. 

unbelief of His countrymen. His power 
was not limited, but His ability to let it 
become operative in tlie lieart and mind 
was weakened. Whosoever should disbe- 
lieve the fact that two and two make four 
would in no wise disturb the relationship 
of numbers. But if he undertook to act on 
the assumption that two and two make one 
or five or nothing, he would disturb his 
own equilibrium and could neither think 
rightly nor act wisely. He would limit 
truth so that it could have no influence 
upon him and would necessarily fall with- 
out the pale of truth-loving and seeking 
and obeying men. To disbelieve in God 
does not affect God. But such an attitude 
limits His power of manifestation. 

Unbelief has a confining effect. If we 
question a man's honesty or candor or 
ability, we limit him at once. It is like 
tying a weight to him and then expect 
him to move freely. Belief in a man's 
honesty, on the other hand, has made even 
dishonest men break loose from crooked 

49 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

ways. Confidence in a man's sincerity and 
ability goes far to help a weak and vacil- 
lating man become strong and self-respect- 
ing. Without doing any violence to the 
facts whatever, we can say that believing 
men have always made for constructive 
forces, and unbelieving men for destruc- 
tive. Take any great period of "onbelief 
in the history of civilization and prove this 
statement. A man who has no will to be- 
lieve is anarchistic in tendency. He is a 
promoter of disorder, whether he be oper- 
ating in the world of letters or science or 
art or education, or whether in the home 
or Church or State. He does not build up, 
but pulls down. 

A believer, on the other hand, always 
makes for construction. He is not to be 
considered as one who takes everything 
for granted, who never looks below the sur- 
face, who never investigates, who accepts 
every profane and old wives' fable. But 
he has a will to believe ; he throws himself 
on the side of law and order and well- 

50 



LIMITING GOD. 

established tradition, and, making these 
assumptions, proves all things and holds 
fast to that which is good. His attitude 
of faith opens the avenues to truth and, 
while he will not be able to understand all 
things, he will be able to sense the mean- 
ing of many a mystery. He will see with 
the eye of faith; he will move not in the 
material world, which decays with each 
decade, but in the spiritual world, which 
ever grows larger as man moves forward. 
One of the disciples said to Jesus, ^^ Mas- 
ter, how is it that Thou wilt reveal Thyself 
unto us and not unto the world?" Jesus 
replied that His life and teaching were 
based on loving and believing disciples. 
They who believed in Him would know 
Him. The world which disbelieved Him 
could not understand Him. To the world 
He would forever speak in mysteries, pro- 
voking anger and scorn and ridicule. To 
His disciples the words which He spoke 
would be spirit and truth. 



51 



V. 

PEACE WITHIN. 

OuB life, like tlie ocean, is always moving. 
Now we are higli on the waves, now dash- 
ing on the shore, now riding in storm and 
tempest and seeing strange specters walk- 
ing on the water. 

The great Master centuries ago com- 
manded the wind and the waves to be still, 
and there was a great calm. But the effect 
of His words was not so much on the ele- 
ments of air and sea as upon His disciples. 
They had become still. Fear and doubt 
had fled. Never again could they sail that 
lake in a storm and not hear the words, 
**Be still!'' and find that their quivering 
hearts were silenced. For it was not 
merely to subdue the tempest that Jesus 
came to them, it was to reassure the disci- 
ples and strengthen their faith. 

52 



PEACE WITHIN. 

Life is not so mucli a problem of sub- 
duing outward forces. It is a task of 
securing inner peace in the calm and poise 
of which all questions are to be judged and 
all conditions met. Not so long ago ma- 
chinists thought two engines alternately 
running would wear longer than one en- 
gine running all the required time. But 
it was discovered that not the continual 
running of the machine made it wear out 
more rapidly, but the friction in the joints 
and bearings. So especial attention was 
paid to reducing friction to a minimum. 
Oiling and packing have become a 
science. 

We think sometimes that if we had two 
bodies, one of which could rest while the 
other worked, we would not become so ex- 
hausted or wear out so soon, and would 
find the peace we covet. The man who 
guarantees a machine to rtm eight hours 
every day for a certain length of time does 
so with full knowledge of its capacity. So 
the All-wise Creator knew the running 

53 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

capacity of man. He made tlie changes of 
night and day for rest and work, and He 
appointed one day in seven for re-creation. 
Man was made to toil. He wears his life 
out unduly not because of labor, but be- 
cause of friction. There are not many men 
who work eight hours a day, seven days in 
the week, and fifty-two weeks in the year. 
But there are many who worry eighteen. 
They have not learned the science of lubri- 
cating and packing the bearings and joints 
of their mental and muscular machinery to 
reduce friction to a minimum. To master 
this principle is as much the concern of 
man for the body as it is of the mechanic 
for a machine. 

We are embarked upon the sea of life 
as the disciples were upon the Sea of Gali- 
lee. It was their business to be there; it 
is ours to be here. They had no control 
over wind and wave; it was their task to 
learn how to trim their sails and balance 
their boat and properly steer it so that 
it would neither founder on a rock nor cap- 

54 



PEACE WITHIN. 

size in open water. This was a knowledge 
first of the spirit and will, and only after- 
ward of skill and muscle. It was training 
the man to be thrown into the very teeth 
of the elements. And although tempests 
came which they could not foresee and 
which swallowed up many an inexperi- 
enced fisherman, such catastrophes did not 
in any sense warrant them to cease learn- 
ing how to manage their boat and to sail 
the sea. 

Neither have we control over the great 
currents and upheavals in the business and 
social world which sometimes engulf us. 
But there are certain rules we have 
learned; we know that under certain con- 
ditions the wind and the waves will act 
in certain ways, and our training, if it can 
be called such, is intended to meet these 
conditions and to teach us how to sail our 
craft in safety. It is the inward man 
first of all, and if he command the inner 
peace of composure and self -poise he will 
ride the harbor safely. He will know how 

55 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

to manage wind and wave, or to keep out 
of their clutch when they are too much for 
him. He will remain in the quiet harbor 
and let them chum and howl outside. He 
will not be among those who, when the 
skies are lowering and the lightning al- 
ready flashing and the thunder rumbling, 
will set out upon the financial Lake of 
Galilee. Those who do so, invite storm 
and stress. They would have peace, but 
refuse to pay the price. If peace comes 
as they fly in the teeth of the wind, they 
will take it ; otherwise not. As they churn 
the waves they set everybody else to rock- 
ing and rolling. As they madly rush for- 
ward to grasp a prize, they force in their 
wake those who would otherwise remain 
calm and unshaken. 

This is the disease of our present life: 
to rush onward in spite of law or restraint. 
Whether it was a disease of five centuries 
or five decades ago need not concern us. 
It is a present problem we have to solve. 
We read of the simple life and perhaps are 

56 



PEACE WITHIN. 

lulled into the delusion that the simple life 
is either possible or desirable. Not the 
simple life, but the peaceful life, should we 
strive for. When everybody nowadays 
must walk faster or lag behind it is idle 
to talk of the simple pace of our fore- 
fathers. Doubtless they thought they were 
whirling along rapidly enough. We have 
our own pace to keep, and we must learn 
how to keep it in peace. Mr. Huxley is said 
to have thrown himself into a jaunting car 
in Dublin and breathlessly to have com- 
manded the coachman, ' ' Drive fast ! ' ' The 
carriage began to jolt over the cobbles, and 
Huxley, collecting himself, said to the 
driver, **Do you know where you are driv- 
ing?'' And he replied, **I do not, sir; but 
I am driving fast, all right. " So humanity 
throws itself into the jaunting car of life 
and gives the command, *^ Drive fast.'' 
But whither? By driving fast we mistake 
speed for progress. In speaking of the 
peaceful life we confound it with idleness 
and inactivity. But the busy life can be 

57 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

the peaceful life; it must be the peaceful 
life. For only thus can we be fitted to this 
world. We can not give up our present 
activities. But in pursuing them we dare 
not barter away our peace. 

On the evening in which Christ was be- 
trayed He said to His disciples, '* Peace I 
leave with you, My peace I give unto you.'* 
At the very beginning of His ministry He 
said, '*Come unto Me all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
And yet, can we imagine a more busy or a 
more restless life than that of Jesus? Was 
it peace He was looking forward to in that 
last night as He sat with His disciples, or 
a sword? Was it peace He was looking 
forward to as He first faced His career, 
or conflict? Was there any time in His 
life when it could be said that He was 
peaceful and at rest? Surely not in His 
boyhood home at Nazareth, when they 
would have cast Him down the hill head- 
long; or on the shores of Galilee, where 
people could not come nigh Him for the 

58 



PEACE WITHIN. 

press ; or in Jerusalem, when He was spied 
upon in the temple and in the streets until 
He was forced to depart from the city each 
night and keep in hiding. And yet we sing 
of His life, and sing truly, that it was 
majestic, calm, serene. Not to outward 
appearances, it is true, but inwardly. To 
be at peace did not mean to Him to be in- 
active or idle or apart from the crowd or 
shut oif from the world. His peace was 
the peace of the restored soul. 

We are apt to think that outward con- 
ditions make the inner states of mind and 
heart. It is the inner state that makes the 
outward condition. Wealth will conduce 
to happiness only if the soul is abounding 
and rich. Power will give control and in- 
fluence only if the mind and heart and 
will have been brought under subjection. 
There can be comfort and peace and rest 
only as these are found and manifested in 
the soul-life. Where the heart of man is 
poor, riches only throw a searchlight upon 
that poverty. Where the mind and the 

59 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

will of man are not under control, temporal 
power only discloses the weakness of tlie 
fortification that should guard the inner 
citadel. When outward disturbance, anx- 
iety, apprehension, fear are manifest, 
there is evidence of inner unrest, of an 
unrest ored soul. 

The unrestful heart is restless in pros- 
perity as well as in adversity ; in times of 
calm as well as in seasons of tempest; 
when the birds are singing and the skies 
are blue as well as when they are flying to 
cover beaten by the first drops of the on- 
coming storm. But the restored heart will 
be at ease when the clouds thicken and the 
skies darken. It can see the rainbow in 
the rain. It feels already the warmth of 
the sun which will shine after the flood- 
gates have been closed. It hears the birds 
singing in spite of the thunder. It catches 
the sweet sound of lowing cattle resting 
care free under the summer shade of a 
wide spreading tree. Its habitual condition 
is joyful; so all things are joyous. Its 

60 



PEACE WITHIN. 

every expression is peace; so the whole 
world is peaceful. It walks in paths of 
righteousness ; even although the valley of 
the shadow is nigh, it fears no evil; con- 
scious of no ill-will, it can sit at meat in 
the presence of annoying enemies; good- 
ness and mercy follow it all the days of 
life, for it dwells continually in the house 
of the Lord. 

This gift, this blessing of the restful and 
strong heart comes from above. He re- 
storeth my soul. God is love, for He has 
placed within our grasp and under our 
control the only means of finding and se- 
curing peace. We are thrown out into the 
sea of life, but He gives us an anchor to 
the windward. We are cast into the tur- 
moil of this world, but He reassures us in 
His still small voice. We seem to be left 
without a comforter and guide, but He 
sends us the Christ to strengthen our weak- 
ness and help us carry our load. In the 
power of perfect manhood He comes, but 
with the fullness of divinity — His heart 

61 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

without guile, His lips pure, His garments 
clean — and 

. . . calls us o*er the tumult 
Of our life's wild, restless sea. 

When the tempest was raging, Jesus 
could sleep calmly. When the mob was 
howling and His judges were unmanned, 
He could keep still. We listen, therefore, 
when He confidently says, **Let not your 
hearts be troubled. Come unto Me." In 
our best moments we hear Him. He has a 
word for all men and for every mood. To 
the anxious soul He quietly suggests that 
there is no cause for disturbance. Peace 
can be found within. To the seeking mind 
He declares that no cause for doubt or per- 
plexity exists, and wisely recommends a 
search for truth within oneself and in Him. 
To the saddened, the sick, the longing, the 
heavy, the lonesome. His encouragement is 
that as they come to know Him they will 
learn to know themselves and their life's 
destinies. He penetrates the heart of 

62 



PEACE WITHm. 

man's condition and hopes in a pronounce- 
ment at once ultimate and universal, ^^In 
the world you will have tribulation ; but be 
of good cheer. I have overcome the world. 
In Me you will find rest unto your souls." 



63 



VI. 

TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER. 

The Transfiguration began while the dis- 
ciples were dead in slumber. The glory of 
the Christ was before them, but they did 
not see His glory. Not until they were 
awake did they kaow of its power and 
beauty. 

The eternal truths of God's revelation 
are in the world everywhere. Only as men 
are awake, however, and in full possession 
of their faculties are they able to discover 
these truths. 

Nature itself is transfigured before men. 
Its glory and wonder shine about us. But 
it has no meaning for men who are asleep. 
There are those who live on high mountain 
passes, where the splendors of nature are 
spread out below them. And yet there is 

64 



TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER. 

no transfiguration, because they are asleep. 
There are those who live in the valleys, 
where they can look over the fertile plains 
and up to the foothills and the towering 
heights beyond, and to sun and moon and 
stars which in all their seductive influence 
woo but do not win, because those looking 
are dulled to their charms. God made a 
world which the verdict of history declares 
to be beautiful and good. Wide-awake 
men behold its transfigurement. But only 
to such is this miracle shown. 

Literature, music, art, have their trans- 
figuration in the depth of the soul. There 
is the power that draws over the poem, the 
statue, the symphony, such change as to 
take it quite out of the sphere of the 
human. If men are awake, the glory of the 
Almighty is discovered in the human in- 
struments which He has chosen to set forth 
His truths. The galleries may be full of 
paintings, the libraries stocked with books, 
the world itself tuned to the harmonies of 
the Infinite. But if there is no wakeful re- 

65 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

sponse on the part of man, tlie miracle of 
the transfiguration remains a mystery. 
The dulled heart and deafened ear and 
sleeping eye can not feel or hear or see. 
The glory of the inspiration of the Al- 
mighty, as it has changed men and made 
them poets, artists, musicians, has been a 
fact from the beginning of time. But the 
transfiguration has been witnessed only by 
men who were awake. 

So, too, is there the transfiguration in 
lives which have striven after good deeds 
and loving ministration. The sainted life 
is transfigured, the glory of God changes 
the outward figure, the face glistens like 
the bright rays of light, and the form 
changes into the whiteness of snow. This, 
too, has been happening from the founda- 
tion of the world. Men and women have 
been transfigured before their fellow-be- 
ings ; but only as these latter are awake can 
they see the glory. 

There is a transfigurement in every 
honest effort at labor or toil. Work is 

66 



TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER. 

transfigured if the work be worthy. No 
position in life is so humble as to escape 
the transfigurement of the Almighty. Men 
are asleep before this fact. If there can 
be a transfigurement in toil at all, so some 
think, it must be in some great labor, some- 
thing that has stirred the soul and awak- 
ened the conscience of humanity, some- 
thing the sound whereof has sent its echoes 
to the farthest shore of human life. A 
transfigurement of this kind, perhaps, is 
possible. But for the humble, unheard-of 
toiler who remains at his duty day by day 
there can be no such miracle. Yet while 
men are asleep the transfigurement of 
lowly labor goes on. As men become 
awake they see its glory and realize that 
every upright toiler is on holy ground in 
the presence of the Almighty. 

We need not look for any mystery in this 
incident which is related of Jesus as He 
was transfigured before His disciples. 
They had been asleep for months, even al- 
though their eyes were opened, and they 

67 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

could not see the glory of the Father. The 
lesson is realistically pointed out to us on 
the high mountain where Jesus took His 
disciples apart. There was no underlying 
mystery or any deep secret. The miracle 
in the life of Jesus was an ordinary one, 
because the same miracle, if we will 
but see it, is ordinary to us in this day.- 
The fact of transfiguration can not be 
disputed. We work along day by day in 
the material and prosaic march of our 
duties. Our feet are on the ground; they 
move heavily ; often do they become mired, 
because we allow them to be weighted with 
the cares of daily life. We are so much 
engrossed with looking after the wants of 
our physical natures and physical condi- 
tions that we become unconscious of the 
higher side of human life. We look at the 
external, we think of the external. The 
world about us is near, sometimes painfully 
near. We would put our hands upon what 
we can feel and grasp; we would put our 
eyes upon what we can see and hold; we 

68 



TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER. 

would walk upon the firm surface of tlie 
earth. This is our world; this is our life. 

And so humankind is not in a position 
to behold the presence and the transfigura- 
tion of the eternal about us. We do not 
look within and discover the needs of the 
soul; nay, some would even declare that 
there is no soul. We do not find in the heart 
of nature something that is hidden from 
sight, something that the hand can not 
touch or the feet walk upon, something that 
goes to the very center of being. And be- 
cause we are dulled to these inner suscepti- 
bilities, to these inner responses, we sleep 
on and do not know that the transfigura- 
tion is taking place. 

A discriminating English writer has re- 
cently written on '^The Spirit of Amer- 
ica," and has pointed out the fact that no- 
where else than in our country is there a 
more evident desire to purchase the results 
of culture, to expend vast sums of money 
to bring the singer or player, or the 
painting or statue, from Europe. But the 

69 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

American is striving after something that 
can not be bought. The soul of the poet 
or writer can not be acquired by mate- 
rial means. The borrowed culture from 
Europe, the result of age-long tradition 
and century-old cultivation, can do the 
dweller on this continent no more good 
than the statues which the Romans stole 
from Greece could impart the culture of 
the Greek to the Romans. And yet the 
culture of Europe may become a personal 
asset of every American who is awake to 
the glory of the Old World art and litera- 
ture. Culture is not tangible, it can not 
be bought and transported. But it can 
enter the soul and the life of the indi- 
vidual who with awakened eyes beholds it 
at the place of the transfigurement. 

This is not to say that the American 
people are wholly devoid of sensibility to 
the finer and deeper facts of life. It is 
to say, however — and this the apprecia- 
tive traveler in Europe notes — that the 
pursuit after wealth and the reaching out 

70 



TEANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER. 

after material influence and power have 
been unparalleled on these shores and men 
have come to believe that money is the 
main thing and will buy anything if only 
the price offered is large enough. The 
fallacy is apparent. A man asleep would 
not even know of the presence of the paint- 
ing, much less appreciate its value. And 
even if his eyes are fully opened, but his 
soul slumbering, he could not respond to 
its call. It is this soul-slumber into which 
we, as a people, have fallen which prevents 
us from beholding the glory round about 
us, the glory which is the manifestation of 
the Almighty. 

When we send our children off to school 
the tendency is to ask. How much better 
able will they be to secure to themselves 
financial gain than they would be other- 
wise? Our institutions of learning can not 
do their real work and fit men and women 
for life until this element of financial re- 
turn is removed from our ideas of educa- 
tion. We see the result of this in every 

71 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

field of human activity. The cry goes up 
everywhere that our colleges are not fitting 
men for the actual duties of life, but only 
giving them the facility of getting the best 
of their fellows. Education means a great 
deal more than the getting together of 
kilowledge and the making the hand and 
mind skillful. Education itself is a trans- 
figuration. It is the soul of the Eternal 
manifesting itself before the souls of our 
youth. They must be awakened to the 
higher, the deeper elements of education, 
so that the transfiguration will be real to 
them and its glory manifest. 

As we have already suggested, every 
kind of worthy laborer must be able to dis- 
cover the fact of transfiguration. Toil in 
itself must be related to the activity of the 
eternal. *'My Father worketh hitherto, 
and I work. ' ' Only as the Father and the 
Son work in that ever-present desire to 
bring order out of chaos, clearness out of 
confusion, truth out of error, and right out 
of wrong, can this old world progress, and 

72 



TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER. 

can men have the abiding conviction that 
this world is good and life in it worth 
while. Not for one single moment does the 
Almighty remove His hand from the wheel. 
Whether He is bringing out the tadpole 
or fashioning the lily or shaping character, 
His work is a transfiguration. To wake 
men up so that they can see their own 
transfiguration in toil and labor, so that 
they can discover the real service to man, 
which they by their labor can perform, is 
the great need of to-day. Art, music, lit- 
erature must play their part in this trans- 
figuration of labor, so that all who toil 
may have the scales cast from ofl their 
eyes and be brought into a seeing nearness 
of the Almighty. 

This is the fact of the transfiguration, 
and if men will open their eyes they will 
behold it. But there is a further thought. 
The transfiguration is not only a fact, it 
is a power. It changes, and the change is 
always from the less to the greater, from 
the lower to the higher, from partial to 

73 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

complete, from error to truth, from doubt 
to belief. So great is its power that if men 
will be serious they will be awakened from 
their slumber. The eternal can not be 
present in the world without manifesting 
that presence through transfiguration, and 
the transfiguration can not continue with- 
out waking up the soul of man if that soul 
is controlled by sincerity of motive. We 
often have our dreams, our ideals, our 
visions ; and suddenly, before we are aware 
of it, there is a transfiguration going on 
before us and we behold its glory. 

" When love dawned on that world which is 
my mind, 

Then did the outer world wherein I went 

SuflFer a sudden, strange transfigurement ; 

It was as if new sight were given the blind. 

Then where the shore to the wide sea in- 
clined 

I watched with new eyes the new sun's 
ascent ; 

My heart was stirred within me as I leant 

And listened to a voice in every wind," 



74 



TEANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER. 

It was on an exceedingly laigli mountain 
that the Transfiguration took place. It 
can not take place down on the levels of 
life. We must get away from our lower 
natures to the higher reaches of the soul if 
we would behold the transfiguration. We 
must have high ideals, true purposes, noble 
desires, if the transfiguring power is to 
transform our lives. We must reach out 
to the soul of the eternal if our own 
souls are to be imbued with the power of 
the eternal. The disciples were compan- 
ioning with the Master day by day until 
the time came when He took them up on 
the heights and was transfigured before 
them. So as we companion with goodness, 
with the better things of life, with the 
higher and nobler forces, the day will come 
when they will take us up to the heights 
of our being and become transfigured be- 
fore us. We shall behold their glory. 

But more than this, we can walk day 
by day with the Master and behold His 
glory. The gospel transfigured before 

75 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

sleeping men; this is tlie sad and awful 
side of the Transfiguration. The gospel 
transfigured before men who are fully 
awake ; this is the significant and inspiring 
side of the Transfiguration. By its power 
men are charged with new life and led into 
the world to do His work. 



76 



VII. 

HONEST DIFFERING. 

There was an honest differing among the 
people concerning Jesus. This can not be 
said of the rulers and leaders of the Jews. 
These had already made up their minds as 
to Jesus' work and worth, and their opin- 
ion was not favorable to Him. But the 
people, the common people, who had seen 
and heard this Prophet from Nazareth, 
were divided in opinion about Him. Some 
were saying, ' ' He is a good man. ' ' Others 
said, **Not so; but He deceive th the peo- 
ple." 

This fact leads us to note that in all great 
questions there is a difference of opinion. 
Not out of unanimity, but out of diver- 
sity of opinion, have peoples advanced, 
nations been bom, art, literature, science, 
the crafts been fostered. Around one cen- 

77 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

tral truth surge and swell counter-currents, 
throwing themselves at each other at times 
with titanic velocity, only to be finally 
drawn into the main channel of the stream. 
The tugging and straining have opened the 
way for truth to sweep onward and come 
into its own. 

Difference of opinion, to continue the 
figure, operates as a sluice-gate which 
holds in check the waters coming from 
widely separated sources on the mountain 
of life, and in due time permits this com- 
bined force to flow onward, turning the 
wheels that grind out and shape the fin- 
ished product of thought. Let two streams 
of water flow down the mountain side from 
opposite directions, and when they meet 
there is a great splashing and churning 
and whipping about, and much froth and 
foam. But further down you see these 
streams as one flowing on peacefully, with 
nothing on the surface to indicate conten- 
tion. The froth and the foam as well as 
the excitements are gone, and down deep 

78 



HONEST DIFFERING. 

beneath is a steady power that works un- 
seen and holds in the leash the tides of 
trade and commerce. 

When two counter-opinions flow down 
from the mountain height of men's minds 
and meet there is a clash, furious and seem- 
ingly irreconcilable, and there is also much 
froth and foam. But later on all this sub- 
sides, men learn to know each other, and 
what was conflict becomes peace, what was 
confusion and destruction a quiet, upbuild- 
ing power that makes for righteousness. 

Take as a very pertinent illustration the 
warfare between science and religion. 
This was so fierce but a few years ago that 
it seemed prudent for one of our brilliant 
scholars to set down in two large volumes 
the nature of this fight. To-day he who 
speaks of a conflict between science and 
religion lives in a past age and must be 
likened to the Southerner in a mountain 
fastness who, as he grew older and needed 
assistance to till his small piece of land, 
went down, not very long ago, to Atlanta 

79 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

to buy a slave, not knowing that a war liad 
been fought and the slaves freed. The 
struggle between science and religion was 
a civil war, a fight between brother and 
brother, which, if the eternal powers had 
not been in control, would have devastated 
the fairest land on which the sun of truth 
ever shone. Science, to change the figure, 
is the willing, the loving handmaid of re- 
ligion, intended by the Almighty to serve, 
yes, and to obey religion. Heaven itself 
has blessed this union. And whom God 
hath joined together, let no man put 
asunder. 

Honest difference of opinion, although it 
means conflict, has as its ultimate result 
a salutary effect and develops the strong 
in man and nations. But much that goes 
for honest opinion is, as a matter of fact, 
not true in its essentials. It is the off- 
spring of pride and prejudice, of stubborn- 
ness and misunderstanding. Self-decep- 
tion is the commonest of all deceptions and 
the easiest to accomplish. And where per- 

80 



HONEST DIFFERING. 

sons are self -deceived their opinions are to 
be taken with a great deal of allowance. 

Take the matter of prejudice, for exam- 
ple. Prejudice is the better half of pride. 
Let them start on their wedding journey 
and go, we will say, to Europe. They are 
in strange, unusual surroundings. New 
faces and different sounds greet them. 
Their eyes and their ears are open. They 
are intensely interested and to a certain 
extent charmed. What a wonderful coun- 
try they are in, and what remarkable peo- 
ple! But soon the tendency to compare 
takes hold on pride. He remembers his 
own country, its unlimited resources, its 
undaunted enterprises, its snowy mountain 
heights of shrewdness and skill, where with 
cool and clear heads the greatest questions 
of state and trade are solved. He begins 
to swell with joy; his patriotic egotism 
knows no bounds; there is no country on 
earth so great, so glorious, as his own. 
And then the hand of prejudice softly 
steals through the arm of pride, and off 

« 81 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

they go, disapproving the temporarily 
adopted, and glorifying their native land. 

This is not an allegory merely. It is also 
a stem fact, and deals with flesh and blood, 
men and women, as they scamper over 
Europe on sight-seeing tours. The most 
worthless of all opinions concerning for- 
eign countries are those of persons, too 
often belonging to the professional class, 
who, having merely scoured Europe, un- 
dertake to tell all about it. These have not 
got over the pride and prejudice stage. It 
is only the experienced traveler who, not 
forgetting his own country, but, because 
of the fact that he remembers it so well, 
is able properly to estimate a strange land 
and a strange people and give both their 
proper desert. And he is always the true 
patriot, loyal to his own country. 

The havoc pride and prejudice play in 
our common daily affairs, unfitting us com- 
pletely at times for worthy judgments, 
needs only a suggestion to be appreciated. 

So too with stubbornness and misunder- 

82 



HONEST DIFFERING. 

standing; these are not found yoked to- 
gether so often as pride and prejudice. 
But, like many another ill-starred mar- 
riage, we find stubbornness and misunder- 
standing now and then joined in unholy 
wedlock. One of the very painful incidents 
of the Protestant Reformation was the dis- 
pute between Luther and Zwingli over the 
sacrament of the Lord^s Supper. Neither 
understood the other. Added to this was 
the unyielding stand taken by Luther, 
which made him appear so other than as 
his true self. History is full of such inci- 
dents: a dogged determination to hold 
one's ground when that ground is falsely 
taken. Standing in the very roadway of 
civilization, men have stopped for dispu- 
tation, blocking the way with their argu- 
ments, making it exceedingly difficult or 
even impossible for those who had a right 
to the road to pass. The opinions of a 
stubborn man or a man who jumps at con- 
clusions are usually to be taken with great 
care. Because the Athenians misunder- 

83 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

stood Socrates they condemned Mm to 
drink the fatal hemlock ; because the Jews 
stubbornly resisted the gentle but persua- 
sive power of Jesus they caused Him to 
be nailed to a cross. 

What we believe colors our life. We 
have no portraits of the men who stood 
about Jesus, and no minute description of 
them. But could a discerning reader of 
character have before him their pictures, 
he would be able to point out those who 
said of Jesus, **He is a good man," and 
those who said, **Not so; but He leadeth 
the multitude astray." Although both 
classes might have been honest in their 
opinions, and we believe they were, yet 
there was something in the character of 
each that made them incline one way or 
the other. A vine in a dark cellar, with 
only a tiny ray of light entering in, will 
turn, in spite of the darkness, to the light. 
So will the intuition of a righteous man 
lead him toward the truth in spite of doubt 
and darkness. An artist who had lived 

84 



HONEST DIFFERING. 

all his life in a provincial town and seen 
only the mediocre work of ordinary artists 
would have certain opinions on art, and 
he would be honest in them. And he might 
take serious issue with another man who 
had feasted his eyes on the masterpieces, 
bathing his soul in their inspiring depths. 
Here would be an honest difference of 
opinion. But how other it would have been 
had our provincial artist also sat at the 
feet of the great painters. 

We can become set in our own ideas and 
ideals, form honest opinions, and yet not 
know that those opinions are of very little 
significance. It is a travesty of art to call 
a man an artist who has never been in the 
company of the great artists, living and 
dead. The very name he assumes implies 
that he is familiar with the highest in his 
profession or is striving for that famili- 
arity. It is a travesty of life to say that 
we are living, and yet continue to remain 
on the lower levels. The very term ^4ife*' 
implies the fullest and strongest capacity 

85 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

to reacli onward and upward. One who 
lias not companioned with Jesus, therefore, 
has no right to speak intimately of Him. 
His judgment will be superficial. Even 
the remark, *^He is a good man," may be 
a hasty conclusion. If it be no more than 
mere assent to the opinion of others, it 
can carry no weight of personal experi- 
ence. And no one can pass judgment on 
the claims or the worth of Jesus who has 
not come into personal touch with Him. 
The testimony of a man who grew old in 
well-doing as he closely related his life 
to the life and teaching of Jesus, will be 
quite different from that of a man who 
lived honestly and decently enough all his 
life, but who was indifferent to the higher 
ideals. The opinions of the latter as well 
as of the former can be regarded as honest, 
but the difference will be that between the 
light of a candle and the light of the sun. 
The one will reach a limited radius, the 
other will flood the world. The one will 
be a wick, which, to burn, must be lighted. 

86 



HONEST DIFFERING. 

The other will be the perpetual source of 
all light. 

Some said, *^ He is a good man;" others 
said, **Not so; but He leadeth the multi- 
tude astray.'' Suppose these men had 
gone direct to Jesus and become acquainted 
with Him; suppose they had laid aside 
their Jewish pride of a kingly ancestry 
that had ruled on the throne of David; 
their Jerusalem prejudice against Naza- 
reth and all that came out of it ; their stub- 
bornness to accept any one as the desired 
Savior unless He came in regal splendor 
and warlike pomp, and, therefore, their 
mistaken attitude of the real person and 
mission of Jesus, and had sat at His feet 
and learned of Him, — would their opinions 
about Him have differed? He who could 
speak but a few words to Nicodemus, the 
master in Israel, and send him away with 
such burning thoughts that his soul was 
afterward warmed into pure and clear af- 
fection and devotion toward Him; who 
could speak to the rich young ruler and 

87 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

send him away with true insight into life's 
real duties and obligations ; who could an- 
swer the lawyers so truly that they must 
admit the supremacy of His wisdom, and 
the doctors so shrewdly that none dare ask 
Him any more questions; who spoke so 
tenderly, so persuasively, that the officers 
who were sent to take Him returned empty- 
handed and with the one justification of 
the failure of their mission, '^ Never man 
spake as this Man;" who could say to 
the unfortunate woman, ^* Neither do I 
condemn thee: go and sin no more;" 
who could say to the paralytic, *^Son, 
thy sins be forgiven thee; take up thy 
bed and walk;" who looked upon the 
people following Him as sheep without 
a shepherd and said, ^'Come unto Me all 
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest," and upon Jerusalem 
and the men who were plotting against 
Him, saying, **How often would I have 
gathered thy children together, even as a 
hen gathereth her chickens under her 

88 



HONEST DIFFERING. 

wings, but ye would not;'' yes, He who 
could say, with crimson perspiration cours- 
ing down His brow, ^'Father, not My will, 
but Thine be done ; ' ' who could stand silent 
when He was insulted and spit upon and 
spitefully accused; who even in death's 
agony remembered to groan out the words, 
** Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do, ' ' — could He not have spoken 
a conclusive word to those who were doubt- 
ful concerning His character*? 

This picture of men passing their judg- 
ments upon Jesus is the picture of Jesus 
standing in the arena of the world's 
thought. All minds come to Him. "We can 
say that the opinions of the serious are 
honest. But we would look beyond the 
scene of this picture to another and see 
the company broken up, each going the way 
of his choosing. Some of them are minded 
to follow Jesus, as the two disciples did, 
and ask Him, ** Where dwellest Thou?" 
And He says, * * Come and see ! ' ' They who 
leave off discussing about Jesus and go 

89 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

to live with Him are alone entitled to pass 
judgment on Him. And they will place 
Him not only in the class of **good men,'' 
but in the uniqueness of the One Good Man, 
construing at its full face value the remark 
of Jesus Himself, **None is good, save One, 
that is God.'^ 



90 



VIII. 

HIDING FROM JESUS. 

ZAccHiEus, we read was a man of small 
stature trying to see Jesus. The incident 
is an interesting one. As we study it, we 
are led to conclude that he was prevented 
from seeing Jesus not so much because of 
a physical smallness of stature, but be- 
cause of a lowness of spiritual reach. 

Here was a man prominent both on ac- 
count of his riches and of his position. He 
was the tax commissioner of Jericho, and 
would not have been seen pushing in the 
street crowd to see Jesus. Had he really 
wanted to come near, the crowd would not 
have been an obstacle. He surely was as 
strong as the woman sick for many years, 
who pushed through as great a crowd of 
men as ever thronged the Master. Then, 
too, had he merely wanted to see Jesus, 
he could have secured a place in one of the 

91 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

windows or on a housetop, where he could 
have seen Jesus with ease and clearness. 

But he ran ahead of the crowd and 
climhed a tree. This seems a most unusual 
proceeding for a rich man and the chief 
of the tax-gatherers, until we note what 
kind of a tree he climbed. It was a syca- 
more tree, the tree of low, thick, spreading 
branches and broad leaves; the tree which 
has always been noted in the Orient for its 
dense foliage and heavy shade. In this 
tree ZacchaBus hoped to screen himself 
from Jesus. He counted on the excitement 
down in the road, with all eyes centered on 
Jesus, to keep the eyes of any from turning 
upon him. He wanted to see Jesus, but 
he did not want to be seen. He did not 
dare to trust himself to the gaze of the 
Master. For had he not heard about Mat- 
thew, Matthew the publican, whom Jesus 
saw and called to be one of His disciples? 
Might Jesus not also call Zacchseus? And 
could he withstand the call? Or, even if 
Jesus did not call him, might He not say 

92 



HIDING FROM JESUS 

to him what He said to the rich young 
ruler, * ' One thing thou lackest ; sell all that 
thou hast and give to the poor, and come 
follow Mef" Zacchaeus was not ready to 
do that, even to be saved. He did not want 
to have any of these embarrassing things 
said to him. Yet he wanted to see Jesus. 
There was something peculiarly attractive 
in this Man, whose fame had gone all 
abroad. 

Here is a type of man we find every- 
where. How many are there who are suffi- 
ciently interested in Jesus to put them- 
selves to some inconvenience to see Him, 
and yet who do not wish to be seen by Him ! 
They are men of small stature spiritually. 
They are neither large enough to look at 
Jesus from the level, nor strong enough to 
secure a position near Him and maintain 
it, in spite of all forces that would draw 
them away. 

Here are the men of business. Many of 
these are immensely wealthy or control 
great resources of wealth; all of them are 

93 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

striving after this world's goods. Few 
ever reacli the point where they conclude 
they have a sufficiency. Now, the princi- 
ples of the Sermon on the Mount are as 
well known to them as was Jesus to Zac- 
chaBus. And a great interest attaches to 
this teaching. It is surprising how numer- 
ous are the books and magazine articles 
and popular lectures on subjects which deal 
directly with the message Jesus delivered. 
A journalist who reads some fifty news- 
papers every day says the amount of space, 
both in editorials and contributed matter, 
devoted to subjects that deal with ethics 
and higher moral standards is remarkably 
large. And the inspiration of these ar- 
ticles is had from the teaching of Jesus. 
He is the dominant force in the higher life 
of to-day. An intense interest is mani- 
fested in Him. Men want to see Him, who 
He is. But they are afraid to come direct 
to Him. They know Him well enough to 
feel His magnetic power. But they do not 
want to be drawn too close to Him. He 

94 



HIDING FROM JESUS 

may ask them some embarrassing ques- 
tions. Or His very silence as He looks 
upon them may be vocal with reproach. 

So their interest in Jesus is that of the 
passive onlooker. It is the interest that 
would ask for information, but which 
would balk at acting upon it if any dis- 
agreeable demands were made. 

There are rich men in every community 
who fall short of their possible usefulness 
simply because they will not interest them- 
selves in Jesus actively. There are busi- 
ness men who only half-heartedly support 
the institutions for righteousness because 
they can not cut loose from the current of 
business practices. They are afraid of 
the teaching of Jesus. They know its grip- 
ping power. They are candid men and 
honest, the men often who most truly rep- 
resent the community. They appreciate 
the straight-forward, unrelenting charac- 
terization of right and wrong as it fell 
from Jesus ' lips. They know only too well 
that, did they let Jesus' teaching really 

95 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

take hold on their lives, it would mean a 
readjustment of their practices. They are 
controlled by the current business stand- 
ards and methods. They must bow before 
the fetish of competition. *^ Business is 
business." **Let him get who can, and 
keep who is able." We recognize to the 
fullest extent the difficulties which beset 
the business man in this terrible tug and 
strain of competition. And we also recog- 
nize that the standards are higher to-day 
than yesterday, and that to-morrow is 
golden with the hope of a still higher 
standard. But in the present there is en- 
tirely too much hiding from Jesus. The 
desire for commercial and financial gain 
is deeper and more controlling than any 
other. Men seemingly must overreach 
their competitors or those from whom they 
draw their income. They can not do this 
and at the same time subscribe to Jesus' 
creed of honesty and square dealing. So 
they climb up into their sycamore trees to 
be mere onlookers while Jesus passes. 

96 



HIDING FROM JESUS 

There is another class which sets itself 
up against the evils which come through an 
inordinate desire to amass wealth and the 
evils which come from ignorance and pov- 
erty among the masses. There are social 
workers, for example, who set themselves 
in earnest toward the amelioration of evil 
and unfavorable conditions. But they lay 
emphasis upon character rather than re- 
ligion. Now, we are not in favor of prose- 
lyting and evangelizing among the masses 
as the sole end of their betterment. A 
piece of bread and butter is worth infinitely 
more to a poor and helpless man than a 
whole bundle of tracts ; and to put a man 
on his feet and enable him to work with 
his hands and his head is worth infinitely 
more than merely to preach to him the sav- 
ing power of the gospel. And yet, if there 
is to be any character, the soil of religion 
must be tilled and sown. And it were idle 
for us to argue that the teaching of Jesus 
is the best seed for religious growth. This 
fact is generally admitted, but not in an 
' 97 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

open and direct way. Rather do we find 
much of the work which is done in the 
name of Jesus credited to some other in- 
fluence. Scant acknowledgment is given 
to His principles. It would seem at times 
that some of the leaders in this work would 
take their lessons from the Man of Naza- 
reth as He passes by, but not let others 
know they have even seen Him. 

So, too, with many of the lectures on 
culture and the humanities. We find the 
rule of conduct they lay down drawn from 
the very heart of Jesus ^ words. We have 
read treatises on ethics and morals in 
which the name of Jesus is not mentioned, 
and no recognition whatever of His stu- 
pendous force in the progress of civiliza- 
tion. And yet there are passages in the 
books so like the teaching of Jesus that 
their authors would be guilty of plagi- 
arism if it were possible to plagiarize 
Jesus' words. These men would consider 
it poor taste to acknowledge frankly their 
indebtedness. For there are some de- 

98 



HIDING FROM JESUS 

mands Jesus would make upon them which 
would modify their teaching or even take 
away the seeming originality thereof. 
What a work there remains to be done by 
these very men in recognizing the Master ! 
They could speak with authority equal to 
that of the Church. 

They could help powerfully, did they 
eome down out of their sycamore trees, to 
give the Church of Christ the influence it 
ought to have to-day in meeting the great 
problems that are before it. 

Then there is another class of small 
persons spiritually who would look at 
Jesus from concealment. They are in the 
Church itself. They saw Jesus face to 
face, and began to walk with Him; yes, 
who even now are ranked among His fol- 
lowers. They know Him only too well and 
are familiar with what He asks of them. 
They come under the Savior's exclamation, 
**Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not 
the things I say unto you?'* They want 
to see Jesus, but they dare not come out 

99 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

into the open. They are God's people in 
God's Church. They hide themselves, 
however, when Jesus passes by. 

A Church, like everything else, in order 
to exist, needs support. Yet there is no in- 
stitution less heartily supported by its ad- 
herents than the Christian Church. There 
are men and women in large numbers who 
want the benefits of Church affiliations, but 
who refrain from identifying themselves 
actively with the work or from assuming 
responsibility. If there were no other rea- 
son for the Church's existence, there is one 
that is all-sufficient. That is the fellowship 
it offers. We need friends, and we need 
fellowship. One of our most eminent psy- 
chologists has said that definite ethical in- 
struction is quite unimportant as compared 
with the subtle influence of another per- 
sonality at the critical moment. The at- 
mosphere of this influence is generated in 
every meeting of people, whether social, 
political, business, or religious. But it is 
the business of the Church to create such 

100 



HIDING FROM JESUS 

an atmosphere. And it meets all its de- 
mands. Where a number of men and 
women are banded together for no other 
purpose but spiritual uplift, a fellowship 
results which is inestimable in its influ- 
ences. And when we say this we are not 
unmindful of the fact that the Church is 
not a perfect institution and that every 
communicant has not attained to fullness 
of true manhood. 

The Church as such needs to be sup- 
ported morally as well as financially. But 
too often do we find avenues in our 
Churches lined on both sides with syca- 
more trees in which sit many a Zacchaeus 
in his cool shade, looking down upon the 
hot and dusty road and on Jesus and His 
few laboring disciples. The place where 
every member of the Church needs to be 
is not on some vantage point, looking on, 
but down in the road, however hot and 
dusty it may be, toiling with Jesus as He 
mounts the steeps to Jerusalem. 

Jesus saw Zacchaeus. Whether His at- 

101 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

tention was called to him by another or 
whether His eye penetrated the foliage, is 
immaterial. Jesus saw him, for it is as 
impossible to hide anything from Jesus 
as to veil the sun. This has ever been the 
power of the gospel. It finds people even 
when they are hiding from it. The psalm- 
ist sensed this ever-present Spirit of God 
and phrased it in words which shall never 
be forgotten. ^* Whither shall I go from 
Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from 
Thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, 
Thou art there ; if I make my bed in sheol, 
behold. Thou art there. If I take the wings 
of the morning and dwell in the uttermost 
part of the sea, even there shall Thy hand 
lead me and Thy right hand hold me." 
The gospel spirit is in the heights above 
and the depths beneath and at the utmost 
reach of the horizon. The winds are not 
swift enough to outrun its messengers, nor 
the darkness black enough to hide its light. 
Zacchaeus was as open before Jesus' gaze 
as though he had been standing near. 

102 



HIDING FROM JESUS 

There is no shade behind which we can hide 
to-day from the Nazarene Peasant. He 
has been the most potent heart-searching 
factor in the world for the last eighteen 
hundred years. We deceive ourselves 
greatly if we think we can be mere passive 
onlookers as He passes by. He sees us and 
calls us just as He saw and called Zacchaeus. 
The only question is whether we will re- 
spond to His call. Zacchaeus might have 
remained in the tree, or, letting himself 
down, might have slunk away. But a 
change came over him as Jesus ap- 
proached. And when Jesus called he made 
haste and came down and received Him 
joyfully. * ^ I have need of you, Zacchaeus, ' ' 
Jesus said; **you can be of great service 
to Me. I must spend the night with you." 
From a passive onlooker, Zacchaeus, by the 
manhood in him which Jesus could touch, 
became an active adherent. More than 
this. That day salvation came to his soul. 
For he took Jesus into his home. 



103 



IX. 

IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND. 

A WOMAN of discernment said, *^I never 
want to teach the lesson of Moses barred 
ont of the promised land. It seems so "un- 
fair. The Children of Israel were ever- 
lastingly dissatisfied with him, and he did 
the verj^ best he conld with them. Yet they 
were allowed to cross over, and he was 
forced to remain behind." 

The words spoken to Moses do seem to 
be a very harsh judgment. After all his 
toils and struggles, his hopes and disap- 
pointments, forty long years of anxiety and 
anticipation, right in sight of his journey's 
end, Jehovah tells him he shall see the 
Promised Land, but may not enter into it. 
Why Moses should not reap the fruit of 
his toil is hard for us to understand. The 

104 



IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND. 

judgment upon him, however, is the judg- 
ment of life upon humankind. 

Let us note that Moses was not only a 
great man, he was a good man. He was 
the only available man God had to lead the 
Israelites out of the slavery of Egypt into 
the mastery of Palestine. We are told, 
nevertheless, that he was debarred from 
entering in because in moments of weak- 
ness he trespassed against God. The weak 
spots in Moses' life were to count more 
against him than all his strength was to 
count for him. There is a trite saying that 
a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. 
It would appear to be a most unwarranted 
conclusion to say that one weak tendency 
in man or one single failure at a time when 
much depended thereon was to be the indi- 
cator of his real strength and usefulness. 
But this is the law we have before us in 
the incident of Moses. It is a law that 
should cause us to ponder deeply. 

If we look into the world we see men by 
the score who came to the very borders of 

105 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

the promised land, but were hindered from 
entering in. Men of good parts, men of 
much promise in youth or even in middle 
age, men who seem even now to be carry- 
ing the real work of the world, have failed 
of their journey ^s end. By mathematical 
computation our engineers can tell us how 
strong a beam or a girder must be to bear 
a certain weight. Those who do business 
in the tall building or who ride on trains 
over the deep chasm can do so with abso- 
lute safety. They know the strength of 
the building or bridge is sufficient to carry 
the weight laid upon it. We have no such 
means of computing the strength of a 
human being. While we can make approxi- 
mations, we can come to no exact figures. 
How much physical, mental, moral, or even 
spiritual strain individual men can bear is 
an unknown quantity. 

Worse than this, there is a tendency on 
the part of human nature to resist any 
actual computation in this regard. The 
youjig man will not listen very attentively 

106 



IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND. 

when problems of physical strain are 
placed before him. He is living in the 
present; he has the assurance that his 
strength is sufficient for his needs. Or, if 
he has indications that this is not the case, 
he is inclined to be indifferent, and will 
not listen to admonition. He is perfectly- 
ready to run his train of life over a phys- 
ical bridge not strong enough to support 
it. Many a young man, therefore, comes 
to the very verge of the promised land of 
life and is told he can not enter in. 

The task of parents and teachers to en- 
list youth in the arithmetic of physical 
strain is a fearful one. Young men and 
women do not seem to care whether they 
make their life-calculations accurately. It 
seems to matter little how much informa- 
tion we have on the subject or how care- 
fully our physicians are able to point out 
the source of future weakness. Knowledge 
of this sort does not represent a present 
quantity. The element of chance enters in 
to such an extent as to lead many a youth 

107 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

to feel that he may be able to override the 
law of nature and win out in the end. The 
future is too far ahead, and years, as one 
looks forward, will pass too slowly to in- 
duce young" manhood to guard against the 
weakening effects which the ordinary 
strain and toil of life bring. And so there 
are middle-aged and older men who hover 
around the border of the promised land 
and who have heard unmistakably the ver- 
dict that they may not enter in, because 
they trespassed against the law of physical 
endurance. 

So in the realm of mental activity. He 
who sins against mental strength will be 
debarred from entering the promised land. 
Some of the saddest wrecks that human 
life makes are the wrecks of the broken 
mind, of the intellect that can not carry the 
day*s strain and toil. Even where there 
is no complete breakdown of mental tissue, 
and man is able to think on the great prob- 
lems before him, there is the inability for 
hard, sustained, penetrative thought. The 

108 



IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND. 

mind can not go the full length ; it can not 
cross over into the promised land ; it must 
stand aside and see others marching on. 
The confusion of voices we have in polit- 
ical, educational, ecclesiastical, and busi- 
ness life to-day, as always, arises from 
the inability of men to think themselves 
through to a satisfying conclusion. There 
is a babel of sounds, but few distinct voices. 
The race is not trained to think; it is too 
slow a process. We would get on. We 
jump at conclusions, and when we arrive 
at the border of the promised land we are 
halted, and may not cross over, for our 
mental mechanism is not adequate for the 
burden over yonder. 

The law of overstrain which brings to us 
the gravest concern is that in the moral and 
spiritual realm. Here we are absolutely 
unable to make any satisfactory calcula- 
tions as to how strong the moral and spir- 
itual foundations of man must be in order 
to carry the full weight of the strain which 
will be placed upon them. There are moral 

109 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

wrecks, of course, and spiritual wrecks, 
men and women who are dropped behind 
in the wilderness and who never come even 
within sight of the promised land. These 
cases are as sad as they seem to be hope- 
less. For the train of humanity marches 
on, counting them out of the race. 

Even the larger portion of those who 
come to the very border of the promised 
land have not trained the susceptibilities of 
the soul and, therefore, have no eyes that 
look inward to the deeper meanings in man 
and nature. We are told that all men are 
bom color-blind, that even he who is most 
susceptible to the shades and harmonies of 
color can not see one quarter of the colors 
which are known to exist in nature. Color- 
sight must be cultivated just as all things 
in life worth while. He who would catch 
the tints of nature must go the whole way 
of preparatory training. So, too, must the 
aesthetic, the moral, the religious sense be 
cultivated. And not only is it sufficient to 
have these senses under culture ; it is nee- 

110 



IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND. 

essary to keep them quick and responsive. 
We know that men who in early life have 
had susceptibilities for the finer capacities 
have permitted these to fall into decay be- 
cause of disuse, and the harmonious strain 
of music or the beauty in form and color 
have no meaning to them. They come to 
the promised land of life and are not able 
to enter in. The sadness that results in 
such cases is shown by the lines noted men 
have written. When they listened to music 
they could catch no thrill ; when they read 
poetry they felt no throb ; when they looked 
at the painting they had no inspiration. 
* Thou shalt not enter in, ' ' is the word they 
heard. And it comes in the gloom and 
desolation which can neither be penetrated 
nor dispelled. 

Or men have allowed the cares of the 
world to press upon them to crowd out the 
better self, to deaden the instinct which 
makes for religion and spirituality. They 
come in their journey where they are un- 
able to enter with any feeling of satisfac- 

111 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

tion into the great religious problems or 
spiritual solaces. They are not at home; 
they do not belong in these realms ; seem- 
ingly they get along fairly well and can 
hold themselves on the other side of the 
border with satisfaction and equanimity. 
Nevertheless there is something lacking. 
The way in which men to-day look for sub- 
stitutes for the simple religion of Jesus 
Christ, the way in which they will grasp 
at every wind of strange doctrine that 
blows, the way in which they will submit 
themselves to religious theories that have 
no foundation in fact, indicate only too un- 
mistakably the presence of spiritual unrest 
and discontent. 

Man belongs in the promised land of re- 
ligion and spiritual truth ; it is the purpose 
of Almighty God to lead him from the 
bondage of Egypt into the freedom of Pal- 
estine. He will bring him the long way 
through vicissitudes and experiences, all of 
which will make him strong. But in the 
lives of too many men there are the waters 

112 



IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND. 

of Meribali or the wilderness of Zin which 
lead them from the way and cause them to 
relinquish their grasp upon the verities. 
So they come to the borders of the prom- 
ised land and hear the word that they can 
not enter in. Spiritual truth has its law 
as well as natural truth. We are just as 
much under spiritual gravity as we are 
under natural gravity. And we are made 
to realize this fact by the inexorable on- 
going of God's will. He gives us intelli- 
gence to choose rightly, and we are the 
makers of our own destiny. What a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap. 

This judgment on Moses was harsh, but 
it is no harsher than the judgment of life 
generally. We can account for the judg- 
ment only as we recognize and submit our- 
selves unto law and order. If this world 
of ours, according to the dictum of the sci- 
entist, for one moment should deviate from 
the regularity of its ongoing, it would 
shrivel up like an empty snake-skin. We 
have the same pronouncement in Holy 

« 113 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

Writ. God can not deviate from His law 
or order, for He is Law and Order. While 
we do not know His ways and do not un- 
derstand how He can temper justice witli 
mercy, as we know He does, we dare not 
take ebances on life. We are going 
througli the wilderness under His guid- 
ance. We must accept this guidance as 
sure and kind. Ours is not to question, but 
to follow. 



114 



X. 

EOUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD. 

Fkom Egypt to Palestine is a march of 
about five days. It took the Israelites 
forty years to make the journey. God led 
them by the round-about way. The near 
way was through the land of the Philis- 
tines, a hardy and warlike people. The Is- 
raelites were not trained to fight. They 
were passing from a period of slavery to 
a land they were to conquer. They had no 
idea as yet what it meant to govern. 
Hence the forty years of training and 
God's round-about way. 

The experience of the Children of Israel 
is our own. The ways are before us. They 
seem short. So far as we know they are 
easy and delightful. But God says, *^You 
must follow the round-about way." Paul 
would have gone to Rome much earlier in 
his experience. He felt confident he could 

115 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

render a service there. But twice we read 
the Spirit restrained him from going. We 
stndy his career and discover he was not 
nearlv so strons: as he thoii2:ht he was; 
had he come to Eome immediately, it mnst 
have been bv wav of the Philistines, and 
he might have been overcome. Then, too, 
he was not trained for his work. He 
needed the expenence which he went 
through to educate him for his great tasks. 
Although God's round-about way led him 
through misunderstanding and persecu- 
tion, it gave him the routine he needed as 
a student of Christ's gospel. Wlien he 
iinally reached Rome it was as a graduate 
in the school of Christ. 

So we make experience. We ask our- 
selves frequently, *^Wliy is it necessaiy for 
us to come to strength and knowledge only 
by the long, round-about wayf We ask 
these questions as grown-up people. Wlien 
we look at the child we are reminded of 
our own infancy and of our weakness and 
ignorance, and we do not wonder it was 

116 



ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD. 

necessary for us to come by slow stages 
of growth into the strength and knowledge 
of maturity. But as the great questions 
crowd about us, as we are dealing with the 
problems of life, we ask why we can not 
make more progress into strength and en- 
lightenment. It matters not whether these 
problems go to the very heart of the uni- 
verse and deal with the grave concerns of 
eternity and destiny, or whether they are 
the more practical problems of success and 
failure in our life's work. Whatever they 
are, we are impatient of the slow progress 
we make. The young man as he enters col- 
lege looks forward to his course with all 
the eagerness and buoyancy of his youth- 
ful enthusiasm. He is apt to fret and to 
chafe under the routine and tho necessary 
stages of his work. Why can he not take 
more hours than are allotted him? Why 
must the course be so long? But when the 
end comes he looks backward with the ex- 
perience he gained while prosecuting his 
studies. The years' wandering in the wil- 

117 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

demess, as it were, seems a very brief 
period, and the training for Ms life's work 
all too short. 

Why does not Grod unveil His face? 
Why has He said, *^No one shall see My 
face and live?'' Why does He hold His 
secrets and mysteries so close within His 
own grasp? The way to the promised 
land of divine knowledge ought to be near 
if God is good. If He is mindful of the in- 
terests of His children, why does He not 
lead them straight to it? This was the 
thought of the early Israelites, who, as we 
are told, concluded to go the near way to 
God. They would build a tower which 
would reach into the very heavens. They 
would project themselves into the very 
presence of the Almighty. They would 
learn His secrets. They would bring them 
down to earth. Up the steps of this tower 
mankind would freely pass, and all that 
was known in heaven would likewise be 
known upon the earth. But God said: 
* ' Not so. This is the way through the land 

118 



EOUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD. 

of the Philistines; you are not strong 
enough as yet to bear the knowledge which 
the Almighty reserves for you. If you 
should peer into the heavens and look upon 
His face you would be undone, and you 
could never reach the mind of the Infinite. ' ' 
So God tumbled over the stones of the 
tower and took the people and led them 
by the round-about way through His school 
of life. 

The Old Testament is a history of this 
education. From the heathen ideas of 
polytheism to the Hebrew idea of the one 
God, who in love and mercy visited His 
people and who did not demand their phys- 
ical sacrifices and oblations, was a long 
step. We read the steps in the great liter- 
ature of the prophets. God led them on 
through this way of the wilderness because 
they needed to be educated. And so, too, 
in the Old Testament we have that intense 
longing for deliverance through the Mes- 
siah who was to come. Job's cry, ^*0h, 
that one might plead for man with God, 

119 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

as a son of man pleadetli for his neigh- 
bor,'^ was the sob of every earnest and de- 
vout Israelite. What grief, what anxiety, 
what darkening of hope and trust there 
were as the Children of Israel reached out 
for the salvation they knew must come! 
Yet God led them in this regard by round- 
about stages. Not until the fullness of 
time was come did He send forth the Re- 
deemer of the world. Thus God reveals 
Himself. He takes His children the long 
way round, and in the experience they 
make there they grow strong in mental 
and spiritual strength. 

Man is not always willing to accept this 
fact. He would go the near way. Here, 
for example, is a class of people whom we 
might call the easy-going class. They lay 
the great problems of life and destiny upon 
the shelf. They will not concern them- 
selves about them. If there is a God in 
heaven, and He is good, He will take care 
of them. There is no need for them to be 
concerned about their welfare. If there 

120 



ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD. 

is no God in heaven, but if we are in the 
grasp of a blindly working mechanism, 
from which we can not free ourselves, then 
we shall come to our sure doom, and there 
is no escape from our fate. Let us drink, 
therefore, and be merry, for to-morrow 
we die. These easy-going people see only 
the near way into life. It is the life of 
least resistance ; it is the life of immediate 
pleasure; it is the life of present gain; it 
is the life to be lived in every detail here 
and now, — the life that leads to the prom- 
ised land of existence. They do not see 
the Philistines along the way, or, if they 
do, do not realize how weak they are to 
cope with them. 

Or here are those who see only evil in 
the world. They hear the song of the lark, 
it is true, but the hiss of the adder sounds 
in their ear. They pluck the wild rose, 
but their pleasure is destroyed because 
they find the poison ivy growing near. 
They till their fields to sow the grain, but 
they do it discontentedly, because they 

121 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

know that the witch-grass or other weed 
will grow in strength and plenty. They 
prune their trees and spray them, but only 
with the thought that the scale or thrip will 
destroy the crop. They do not hear God's 
voice in the gently falling rain, but in the 
rolling thunder. They do not see God's 
hand in the warming ray of the sun, but 
in the flash of the lightning. God's pres- 
ence is not discovered in the sprouting of 
the grass or the dawn of each new day, but 
in the earthquake or the volcano or the 
tidal wave. God is present somewhere, 
doubtless, but He is a great cosmic force 
removed by infinite stages from the life of 
the individual. He is bringing a world to 
perfection. He is training a people for ulti- 
mate good and happiness. In the process 
there will be great cataclysms of nature. 
The deeps of the ocean will be stirred and 
the peaks of the mountains will tremble 
and human beings unnumbered will go to 
their death. Man as an individual will be 
only an incident in the ongoing stream of 

122 



ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD. 

life. If he has discovered anything good, 
if he has developed a mind that is able to 
grasp and ^x great truths, if he has left 
a song or a painting or a statue which ap- 
peals to posterity, if he has been the lead- 
ing spirit in a body politic or a religious 
order or an educational system, his 
achievements will simply be added to the 
sum total of the good that man accom- 
plishes as he lives his life and does his 
work. But he himself will pass out into 
the night. He was only a spark which was 
fanned by environment and conditions into 
a bright light, but which was extinguished 
again by the very same forces of environ- 
ment and condition. So the pessimist or 
the stoic is abroad in the land. He would go 
the near way. He can not see the reason 
or the purpose of the round-about way, and 
before he knows it, comes in conflict with 
the Philistines and goes down to defeat. 

Or there are those who look upon life 
only as beautiful and good. This is their 
near way to the promised land. There are 

123 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

jarring discords, there are black clouds, 
there are grave apprehensions. But they 
would drown the discords in pleasant mu- 
sic, they would draw rainbows over the 
clouds, they would quiet themselves by 
false hopes in spite of their fears. Sin is 
non-existent; evil is good gone wrong or 
not yet able to adjust itself to the higher 
life ; pain is only an imagination ; sickness, 
a delusion. Like the Hindu of old, they 
would draw the robe of f orgetfulness about 
them and lose themselves in an imaginary 
world. But this is the way of Philistia. It 
is not God's way. The hard, obstinate 
facts of sin and sickness, of misery and 
woe, are before us, and in order to under- 
stand them we have to wander through the 
wilderness. We must make the experience 
of the Children of Israel. We will be re- 
bellious, we will be impatient, we will be 
obstinate; but under God's hand we must 
continue. 

The problem becomes a personal one. 
We all go through a bondage in Egypt ; a 

124 



ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD. 

slavery of some kind attaches to us. God 
can and does lead ns out of this Egypt. 
He can do it in a night, as He led out the 
Children of Israel. But it is an entirely 
different matter for Him to take us to 
Palestine. The Egypt inheres in our blood, 
it flows through our veins, and it is as im- 
portant for the Almighty to get Egypt out 
of us as it is to get us into Palestine. 
The long, round-about way is necessary. 
If we were strong enough to go through 
the land of Philistia we would immediately 
think too highly of ourselves. The feel- 
ings of independence would stir in our 
veins; we would have no need for the Al- 
mighty; nay, we would even ignore Him, 
or declare Him to be non-existent. 

"We must go the longer way. Here we 
shall meet our foes gradually and have a 
fighting chance against them. We must 
be led even to the very point of despair, 
where water and food fail us, in order to 
see that God can and will provide. We 
must be placed before inscrutable mystery 

125 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

in order to see that the mind of man is not 
sufficient nnto itself, but dependent upon 
God. By constant disappointment in the 
wilderness we must learn that stability and 
sufficiency in daily life are the result of 
gradual, painstaking, invigorating growth, 
and that the road to case and plenty is the 
round-about way. When we come face 
to face with the deeper problems of life we 
must understand that there is something 
lying underneath, and that only as we 
strive to reach this can we show ourselves 
fit for life's task. 

Life is the test ^f the long run. It is 
not an easy task. Its solutions are not 
clear and ready. But it is a run we can 
make; it is a task we can accomplish. A 
Federal commissioner listened attentively 
to a proposed plan, and finally gave his ap- 
proval. But he added, **Do you know that 
you have entered upon a hundred years' 
job!" **We do,'' was the instant re- 
sponse, **and so we haven't an hour to 
lose." God calls us, and He leads. 

126 



XI. 

THE WIDENING UNIVERSE. 

Deep in the consciousness of men lies the 
conviction that for earnest and devoted 
consecration to any cause there is no limit 
to the possibility of result. He who truly 
loves his calling or pursuit is aware of the 
fact that there are wide areas for him to 
possess which as yet lie undiscovered. 
And even if he feel his incapacity to dis- 
cover and possess them, he is not ready to 
say that no other is capable of this task. 
The most conceited or self-confident man 
dare not claim that human ability and ca- 
pacity have come to their final flowering 
in him. 

As we consider how man's universe 
widens as he loves and devotes himself to 
any one cause, we find a confirmation of 
the words, *^Eye hath not seen, nor ear 

127 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

heard, neither have entered into the heart 
of man the things that God hath prepared 
for them that love Him/' 

Following this thought, we see how the 
loving mind and heart ever lives in a 
widening and expanding universe. This 
is true in our most commonplace experi- 
ences. He who loves the stars and the 
flowers will exclaim with the psalmist that 
*^the heavens declare the glory of God and 
the firmament showeth His handiwork." 
And his universe will be an ever widening 
one, for he will discover the presence of 
God even in the common wayside bush. 
He who really loves his neighbor will be- 
gin to understand the power of love that 
passeth all knowledge. His universe will 
ever be a widening one, for he will be in 
the presence of the Eternal, whose love fills 
the earth as the waters cover the sea. 

But in a more particular sense we dis- 
cover how a devoted mind and heart en- 
larges its own world. We look out on the 
heavens at night and see a white patch of 

128 



THE WIDENING UNIVERSE. 

light. To the naked eye it has the appear- 
ance of a filmy vapor. This is all it will 
remain to those who have no further in- 
terest in heavenly bodies. But for him 
who really loves the stars, what a widening 
universe there is ! He turns his telescope 
upon that milky spot, and it miraculously 
expands into a whole world of planets, each 
moving with as much regularity and pur- 
pose across the beaten tracks of the sky 
as the planet upon which we live. Within 
the radius of the natural eye one can count 
six thousand stars; the telescopes of our 
modern observatories multiply this range 
of vision more than two hundred times, 
and in that ever widening area a hundred 
million suns are seen to revolve. 

Even after the eye of man, looking 
through the strongest telescope, has ex- 
hausted its power, the universe of the 
heavens still continues to widen. For a 
sensitized plate is applied to the eye-piece 
of a telescope, the huge tube is turned to 
what seems an empty space in the arching 

* 129 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

heavens, and after long exposure tlie plate 
is dotted with thousands of tiny points, — 
each point registering a planet circling in 
its orbit at a distance beyond even the 
guess of man. What the human eye can 
not see is by this miracle made known to 
human knowledge, and there is not a scien- 
tist foolish enough to dispute these facts. 
Eye hath not seen, — and yet to the mind of 
man it hath been revealed. Think of the 
enthusiasm of the psalmist as he said, 
**When I consider Thy heavens, the work 
of Thy finger, the moon and the stars 
which Thou hast ordained. ' ' And yet that 
ancient Hebrew had no conception of the 
innumerable unseen worlds the Almighty 
was holding in the hollow of His hand. 
For beyond all human vision a thousand 
million suns and planets were revolving, 
and he could see only a few stars. 

Shall we stop with the astronomer? 
What the telescope reveals to us on the 
scale of the vast the microscope reveals on 
the plane of the minute. How many 

130 



THE WIDENING UNIVEESE. 

spheres as large as an orange or even a 
football would it take to fill the area of onr 
globe? And yet such an inconceivable 
number of spheres are packed into every 
dewdrop, and science discovers that in each 
one of these infinitesimally small molecules 
is a stellar system as regular as the solar 
system, and much more marvelous because 
a million million times more minute. Can 
we stop here? The same widening universe 
opens up for the botanist, the geologist, the 
chemist, the physicist, the psychologist. 
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man the 
things which lie discoverable for every true 
devotee of science. 

Or turn to what we regard as ordinary 
inventive ability. How have the discov- 
eries of the last hundred years added to 
the sum total of our knowledge and com- 
fort ! And yet, does any one believe there 
is a limit to the possibilities of creative 
genius? Every invention is but as a peb- 
ble dropped into the bottomless lake of 

131 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

life's possibilities starting the concentric 
circles to move closer in shore. The inven- 
tion of telegraphy was a feat which our 
forefathers would have ascribed to a black 
hand, and the ancients have written down 
as a miracle. To operate a keyboard in 
Baltimore and make another keyboard in 
Washington register the same signals so 
that an intelligent and accurate message 
could be reproduced, might well have 
seemed to the men of sixty years ago as 
the limit of telegraphic communication. 
But for the minds devoted to this pursuit 
there was a widening universe, and soon 
the subtle currents of electric power were 
running over the mountains and under the 
seas, until the whole world became a net- 
work of telegraphic appliance. 

Was this the end? Had the limit of elec- 
tricity to transmit messages been reached! 
Not at all. Other minds were only stimu- 
lated. The universe continued to widen. 
What Morse in 1844 perhaps had not 
dreamed off, Bell in 1876 was putting into 

132 



THE WIDENING UNIVERSE. 

operation, and the wires began to carry 
audible speech over widely separated dis- 
tances. And still the universe widened. 
For Marconi made the very air articulate 
and compressed the expanse of the ocean 
in the speaking limits of a drawing-room. 

These are only a few of the many illus- 
trations that suggest themselves to us. 
Who dares be hopeless or pessimistic about 
the future or declare what may not yet be 
in store for the loving mind and the search- 
ing heart? 

What is true in the physical realm is 
true also in the mental. We sometimes de- 
plore the fact that we have no great men 
such as lived twenty or fifty or two thou- 
sand years ago. We compare our literary 
age with the Elizabethan or ancient clas- 
sical; we speak of philosophers and think 
of Plato and Kant; we study art and go 
back to the period of the Renaissance, as 
though literature and philosophy and art 
were dead in this day and generation. 

Even in a field where it may seem that 

133 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

tlie old is better than the new is there ever 
the expansive power of the mind to grap- 
ple with humanity's growing problems. 
Man is so constituted that he is forever 
equal to his emergencies. Not every man 
has been a great man or a leader, to be 
sure, but a man for every age and every 
crisis of the world's history has appeared. 
Humankind has not yeit been left without 
a mind ready for the demands of the hour 
or an innumerable company capable to 
undertake the tasks of the moment. At 
times there has seemed to be a long wait- 
ing for such men, as though the currents of 
life were running to the shore and there 
were no escape from the shoals. But just 
as we have steamed along the coast and 
the land closed in on all sides, and at the 
moment when our ship seemed sure to 
strike the reef, the shore began to give way, 
there was a broadening of the waters, and 
we found ourselves in a haven for safe 
anchorage and a future starting-point on 
our journey; so in times past have the ob- 

134 



THE WIDENING UNIVERSE. 

stacles confronting the State, the Church, 
the school, the individual, melted away as 
the widened universe of some mind opened 
out, and a safe repose was found until the 
further steps of progress needed to be 
taken. 

It is most suggestive to study the prob- 
lems with which successive ages have had 
to deal. All the puzzles, for example, that 
the modem mind has grappled with con- 
fronted Greek philosophy four hundred 
years before Christ was bom. The Greeks 
magnificently answered them, but only 
from their point of view and limited expe- 
rience. Their answers did not solve the 
problem, but they served to stimulate the 
thought of succeeding ages as the widening 
universe of man's mind demanded. Plato's 
mind was a high tower in the Ancient 
World, but it was not high enough to 
darken succeeding minds. The intellect of 
the great German philosopher has been 
regarded as the highest peak in the range 
of modem mental capacity. The mighty 

135 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

stirrings in his brain piled up the world 
of thought mountain high, and men are 
still climbing to reach that height. But as 
a lower mountain, looked at from the plain, 
will hide the higher mountains beyond, so, 
standing on the level of the present, we 
dare not say that contemporary thought 
does not, or that future thought will not, 
see yet higher peaks of intellect. The more 
we study the progress of thought the more 
do we discover the power of mind and the 
capacity of life to unfold an ever-growing 
and widening world. 

This fact has deep meanings. If the 
Almighty has put man in a widening uni- 
verse and has given him the power to grow 
with it, is there to be a sudden end to this 
growth ? Why shall it not continue as long 
as the universe? The universe is not 
merely this world, it is the whole creation 
and thought of Almighty God. Why, then, 
should we limit life to this world, and not 
rather consider it co-extensive with God's 
universe, and hence eternal? 

136 



THE WIDENING UNIVERSE. 

This has ever been man's belief, even in 
the ages of tradition long- preceding the 
times of history. And there has been no 
power able successfully to drive this 
thought from the minds of men. Ancient 
and modern doubt and skepticism have 
been as little able to confine man in his 
thought to a life that ends in this world, as 
the stone that was rolled in front of Jesus' 
grave was capable of holding Him a pris- 
oner therein. Science does not separate 
us from God, but ever brings us closer to 
Him. And the nearer we come to Him the 
more are our minds stayed by the power 
of an endless life. **What aforetime men 
ignorantly believed, Jesus hath declared 
unto us, and hath brought life and immor- 
tality to light." As death was not the cul- 
mination of, but only an incident in His 
life, so can death have no fears for us, for 
we are already in our Father's house, liv- 
ing the life eternal, and shall simply enter 
its larger room. 

Our unfinished work, the hundred plans 

137 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

we have evolved and the thousand ambi- 
tions we have cherished, will not come to 
naught. In that wider universe that shall 
naturally unfold for us we shall labor and 
love throughout eternity. My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work. Because I 
live ye shall live also. Where I am there 
ye shall likewise be. What that universe 
is, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, but it 
exists as surely as do the planets revolving 
in space beyond our power of sight; it is 
as real as human love, which we feel, but 
can not understand. 

What is our warrant for these state- 
ments? Not the voice of the scientist. If 
he tells us there is no human immortality, 
we reject his statement. But not because 
of lack of proof — simply because of his 
own personal disbelief. If he tells us there 
is human immortality, we gladly accept his 
statement. But not because he has proved 
it — simply because he personally believes 
it. For *Hhe faith of immortality de- 
pends on a sense of it begotten, and not 

138 



THE WIDENING UNIVEESE. 

on an argument of it concluded." (Bush- 
nell.) This sense is begotten of God; it is 
His creation, implanted in the heart and 
life of man. As we love Him we prepare 
ourselves for all that He has in store for 
us. We nourish this life so that it natu- 
rally widens into the life beyond. 

As we contemplate the resurrection of 
Jesus, it is a significant fact that He ap- 
peared in His resurrection body to none 
save His followers. Those who loved Him 
saw Him and recognized Him as soon as 
He exhibited some trait of character or 
manner of speech with which they had 
been familiar in His lifetime. The eyes of 
the two walking with Him to Emmaus were 
beholden simply because they were looking 
down upon the ground, and not up at Him. 
As soon as they looked upon His face they 
recognized Him and understood why their 
hearts had so burned within them as He 
talked with them. 

Here is the conclusion of the whole mat- 
ter. The soul that is preparing itself for 

139 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

immortal life, that is looking upon the fair 
face of the Eternal, is able to recognize and 
comprehend immortality. The pure in 
heart shall see God; they who love Him 
shall enter into the Kingdom prepared for 
them before the foundation of the world. 
**For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man 
the things that God hath prepared for them 
that love Him.'' Immortality thus be- 
comes an experience and we begin to live 
the immortal life here and now. 



140 



XII. 

EVENING AND MOENING. 

We read in Genesis that the evening and 
the morning were the first day. The prog- 
ress of creation was from nightfall until 
dawn, and not from daybreak until sunset. 
The eternal forces were working not 
through the bright hours of sunlight until 
darkness, but through the dark hours of 
the night until sunrise. The earth in the 
beginning was without form and void, and 
darkness was upon the face of the deep. 
We think of the end of the world as a 
day of great darkness, when the sun shall 
be veiled and the moon hidden. But this 
may be but the beginning of the world, or 
of a new era. When the earth trembles 
and the mountains bum and smoke covers 
the land, man fears that the last moment 
of the world has come. But the great cata- 
clysms of history have marked beginnings 

141 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

rather than final stops, and we note the 
order of progress from evening until morn- 
ing. 

Darkness is so much a suggestion of 
dread, and even of death, that we fail to 
note its significance. In the divine econ- 
omy it is the beginning, and not the end, 
of the day. It is the evening and night 
through which man must pass to the morn- 
ing and day. If we can grasp this truth 
we shall have a key with which to open 
many a dark chamber of life, and light 
will stream upon many a clouded and con- 
fused problem. 

In the beginning darkness was upon the 
face of the waters. It was upon this dark- 
ness that the Spirit of God breathed. Had 
there been light at the beginning, there 
would have been need of neither sun nor 
moon nor stars nor even of God Himself. 
God alone is Light. All else is darkness 
until He breathes, and then He leads His 
children through the night into the day. 
At the end of the day there is not night 

142 



EVENING AND MOENING. 

again, but the new and endless day wliicli 
John on Patmos saw, where ** there shall 
be no need of a candle, nor light of the 
sun, for the Lord God giveth it light, and 
they who dwell there shall reign for ever 
and ever.'' From the chaos and darkness 
of Genesis to the heavenly order and light 
of Eevelation — this is the divine progres- 
sion. 

We find darkness at first on the face of 
man's intellect. We call the years which 
divided ancient from modem history the 
Dark Ages. But this age was as the first 
streaks of dawn compared with the dark- 
ness of history's beginning. This dark- 
ness at the beginning can not be pene- 
trated. Scholars devote their best energy 
to lift the veil of dimness. They can go 
back a certain way only. Then mystery 
and myth begin. The light of day becomes 
enveloped in a mist, and this mist leads 
to night. Into this night there is no pass- 
ing. The progress is from darkness to 
day, and not otherwise. 

143 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

It would seem as though there were a 
divine wisdom here in blocking man's way 
into the past. It would seem as though 
man, like Moses, were asking to see the 
face of God, and that the answer came 
back, *^My face thou shalt not see, for 
there shall no man see Me and live.'' 
There is a reason here. For we know that 
men who persist in remaining in the dark, 
even although their first purpose was a 
good one, are not fit for the day. They 
lose their organs of sight like the mice in 
Mammoth Cave and the moles in the earth. 
Herein is a suggestion, too, why scholars 
who live only in the past, or whose inter- 
ests are subjective and not objective, pro- 
mulgate views often which have no relation 
to or importance for the light and life of 
our world. They are called closet-philoso- 
phers, because they never move beyond the 
rooms in which they work. 

The mind of man begins by groping. He 
is first blind. Even after his eyes have 
been anointed he sees men as trees walk- 

144 



EVENING AND MORNING. 

ing. In the beginning, to drop the figure, 
he is in the region of ignorance. He un- 
derstands but a few facts, and these often 
he is unable to demonstrate. He must 
reach his conclusions by making mental 
leaps. He can not pick out a way step by 
step. When God called Abraham to go 
forth into an unknown land, Abraham was 
in darkness. His only light was the fact 
that God called him. So the mind of man 
moves in darkness when his intellectual in- 
stincts call him to go forth into a new coun- 
try. His only light is the persistence of 
the call. There are streaks of light in the 
darkness sometimes, but too often they 
are not the real light. They are 

'*The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread.*' 

It is well to note this fact. It is declared 
by some that darkness reigns only in the 
realm of religion; that in science there is 
light, and no darkness at all ; and that this 
light lighteth every one that cometh into 
the world. "We should not get very far 

145 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

if we depended only upon the light of 
science. Here, as well as everywhere else, 
there is night in the beginning, a groping 
in the dark, reaching out the hands of spec- 
ulation and hypothesis, until there is some- 
thing firm to grasp hold of and day can 
be drawn in. In every department of the 
mental life we go forth with theories, with 
stray bits of testimonies. As we cling to 
these, by the faith that is in us, light be- 
gins to dawn and we are able to see. 

There is darkness in the beginning on 
the face of man^s moral aspirations. Man 
desires to be good and to do right. But 
he has a very limited insight into what is 
good. We are disturbed sometimes at the 
relentless recital of immorality in the Old 
Testament. Instead of declaring, on the 
one hand, that the accounts of wholesale 
murders and of wickedness frequently re- 
sulting in tragedy are a sufficient reason 
for rejecting the Bible as a moral guide, 
or, on the other hand, of assuming that 
God was responsible for such doings, and 

146 



EVENING AND MOENING. 

therefore can not be a good or loving God, 
it is well to look at such accounts squarely 
and ask why they are permitted in a book 
that takes a higher moral plane than any 
other book ever written. The accounts of 
immorality in the Old Testament do not 
vitiate, but emphasize the moral teaching 
of the Bible. And this Book would not 
be true to itself if there were no details 
of darkness in the moral strivings of its 
heroes. It is an account of human nature, 
and human nature has its evening before 
its morning. Go as far back as we can into 
the beginning of mankind, and we find 
him moving in moral darkness. The im- 
mediate members of his family or clan 
were his friends. But everybody else was 
his enemy. And any means was honoraHe 
which would enable him to conquer and to 
kill his enemy. Even after Israel had ad- 
vanced far in its knowledge of God it still 
regarded Him as the God only of the He- 
brews and would have excluded all other 
nations from the benefits of His love and 

147 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

wisdom. In the individual life the rights 
of one's neighbor, especially of woman, 
were not considered in the light of our 
modern altruistic and beneficent motives. 
Property of others was appropriated, sa- 
cred obligations were trampled upon. The 
law of most might and keenest shrewdness 
prevailed. 

This could not have been otherwise. 
And yet man went forth out of darkness 
into light. The desire to be good and to 
do right constrained him. The darkness 
of his moral conduct was a schoolmaster. 
And he learned lessons which he carved in 
the milestones which mark civilization's 
advance. At the present time we are in 
the full light of day on many a moral ques- 
tion. The darkness of the beginning is 
past, and we shall go on into endless day 
as we use the light we have. But other 
questions rise continually concerning 
which we are in moral darkness. Every 
advance civilization makes is but the an- 
nouncement of a new moral problem. 

148 



EVENING AND MOENING. 

Mankind was never in a darker age 
morally than that throngh which we have 
been and are passing in regard to the great 
moneyed interests of our land. Stealing 
was considered the unrightful taking of a 
loaf of bread or the breaking and entering 
into a bank at night, and a thief one who 
went about stealthily and with a jimmy, 
and a murderer one who shot down another 
in cold blood. But new kinds of stealing 
and lif etaking have germinated and grown 
so rapidly that printing presses have been 
kept busy describing and declaring against 
them. The great moral problem to-day is 
the problem of the trust, whether it be of 
capital or labor. While right-minded men 
are groping around in the darkness for 
a solution of the problem, all kinds of 
known and hitherto unknown wrongs, mis- 
demeanors, and crimes are being perpe- 
trated. But it is not a going back into the 
darkness of past ages. It is a mark of 
progress. Large and intricate combina- 
tions of capital, close and far-reaching 

149 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

amalgamations of labor, were inevitable. 
We are forced, to be sure, to protect our- 
selves from the maraudings and depreda- 
tions of this night-time, and to set what 
lights we can to guide us in the darkness. 
But the day will dawn and the terrors and 
iniquities of the night will be an experience 
that taught us our way. 

In the realm of morals as well as of in- 
tellect there is first evening and then morn- 
ing. Darkness in the beginning is also on 
the face of man's spiritual yearnings. In 
his mental operations man endeavors to 
know. There is no moral or ethical prin- 
ciple, as such, involved. In his moral striv- 
ings man seeks to come into proper rela- 
tions with his fellow-men, to be right be- 
fore them and to have their approval. But 
in his spiritual yearnings man tries to 
come into close communion with the Eter- 
nal. This desire has always characterized 
man, and it represents his truest self. 
Man is religious, because he tries in spite 
of himself to break through the cloud that 

150 



EVENING AND MORNING. 

hides him from God. And singular as it 
may seem, God, who is Light, is ever repre- 
sented as hiding in darkness. The peoples 
who lived before the Israelites groped in 
densest darkness. To them it was the 
night-time of God's existence. Their ef- 
forts to find Him are interesting, but not 
instructive. Their mythologies, it is true, 
struck many a light in the darkness, but 
the flames were feeble and soon died out. 
The Israelites had a feeling for the light 
even in their midnight darkness. As they 
believed that the sun had gone in hiding 
over night and would reappear, so they 
also were convinced that God would some 
time come out of the darkness and show 
Himself to them. This belief was evi- 
denced in such words as are reported of 
Moses when he is expostulating with God 
and cries, **Show me Thy face." But the 
Lord spoke to Moses, we are told, only out 
of the darkness and the clouds and the 
thick darkness. The mountain itself 
burned with darkness. In the darkness 

151 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

God made His pavilions. Darkness was 
in His paths, as Job said. Thick darkness 
was His swaddling band. His treasures 
were in darkness. And again and again 
the psalmist declares that clouds and dark- 
ness are about Him. 

Yet this darkness is the precursor of 
light. It is evening first and the long hours 
of the night, and then morning. The 
writer of the Book of Eevelation has the 
secret when he says, ** Behold, He cometh 
with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." 
The writers of the Old Testament thought 
He came in the clouds, and that the clouds 
therefore enveloped Him. But he who saw 
the New Jerusalem coming down out of 
heaven and the eternal light, saw that God 
comes not in, but with, the clouds and that 
the darkness is only in the seeming. 
Every eye shall see Him. SufPering is a 
cloud, but God is not in the cloud, He comes 
with it, and in the darkness is ever present 
to lead the trusting soul into the light. 
Our inability to understand the deep and 

152 



EVENING AND MORNING. 

hidden things of life, to know what the 
morrow is to bring forth, to comprehend 
the happenings even of to-day or of yester- 
day, are all clouds which envelop ns. But 
they do not envelop God. He is not in the 
cloud, a part of it. He comes with the 
cloud. They are His messengers, modes 
of His workings, and **so far from delay- 
ing His coming, are the very chariots in 
which He comes." 

No life can be complete without its night 
as well as day. The Spirit of God moves 
on the dark face of man's spiritual long- 
ings. He says, ^^Let there be light," and 
there is light. But He teaches us in les- 
sons we ought not to misunderstand that 
there will be many a night of darkness in 
our lives, many an hour of fear and trem- 
bling and cold dread, many a season of 
loneliness and heartache. These are clouds 
in which He reveals Himself. They are not 
the end of hope and trust, but the begin- 
ning ; not the close of life, but its opening, 
when the candle of our night-time, with its 

153 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

« 
feeble and uncertain flame, will become 

needless as the great orb of day illumines 

our pathway. John saw this on Patmos 

because he walked with Jesus in Palestine. 

As he thought of darkness he remembered 

Jesus, the Sun of righteousness. This 

was the Light he experienced. And this 

Light *4ighteth every man that cometh 

into the world." He saw Him come with 

the clouds to usher in an endless day. 



154 



xin. 

EVEEY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

After a long discussion with Jesus and 
with each other concerning Jesus, the 
crowd dispersed, and ^* every man went 
unto his own house/' This is a common 
experience of life. The lecture-room, the 
sanctuary, the banquet hall, the house of 
mirth, the shop, the factory, holds its as- 
sembly for the time being. And then learn- 
ers, worshipers, revelers, toilers disperse 
and go home. The way of some may be 
the same for a while. But one by one they 
begin to drop ofP and turn to side paths, 
until every man has entered his own house. 
And into that house none but he can enter. 
For his house, which he finally enters, is 
not four walls and a roof, but the inner 
recesses of his own self. 

This fact is full of meaning. It suggests 

155 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

that every man has his own house. The 
tendency to look into the house of an- 
other, especially at night, when the cur- 
tains are not drawn, or to roam about a 
vacant house, to see how its rooms are ar- 
ranged, is as strong as it is natural. A 
large part of the tourists' time in Europe 
is devoted to visiting the homes of cele- 
brated people and tramping about the pal- 
aces of royalty. We enter the house of 
some world-famed man, be it the house 
where he was born or in which he toiled or 
died, and listen with rapt attention as the 
attendant leads us from one room to an- 
other. But the voice of that attendant 
seems to be the voice of a f ar-otf age, as it 
grinds out the hackneyed phrases, **Here 
was his sleeping apartment," or, *^Here 
the living-room," or, *^Here his study," 
and so on. These we have come miles to 
see; the spirit of the man who used them 
is still pervasive ; it speaks, and we under- 
stand his writings or his works a little bet- 
ter. But after all we feel that this was 

156 



EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

not his real house and does not explain 
the man. We would still push behind the 
external into the real spirit of the man. 

We have intimate friends. Our tastes 
are literary or scientific, and we have a 
certain entree into the homes of literary 
and scientific men. We are invited into the 
drawing-room and engage in more or less 
desultory conversation in the midst of con- 
ventional surroundings. Or we are asked 
to the dining-room, where the conversation 
becomes intimate and familiar. Finally, 
perhaps, we are taken into the study or the 
laboratory. Now we have reached the 
inner sanctum. We see the books of our 
friend and the table at which he writes; 
or his microscopes and test-tubes and the 
place where he experiments. If our in- 
terest is keen, we tread as on hallowed 
ground. We are in the very place from 
which emanate essays and books charged 
with life and formulas far-reaching in their 
importance. But are we? 

The thought soon fastens upon us that 

157 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

mere tools and a workshop do not let us 
into the secret of that man's labors and 
success. These are the mere common- 
place. There stands the man. The secret 
of his work will ever remain hidden in his 
breast. For that is his house, and none 
may enter. And while he may be disposed 
to let everybody in and open up every 
corridor and chamber of his inner self, still 
it is beyond his power to disclose the mys- 
teries and treasures of that inner house. 
The eyes of those who enter there must 
remain holden. 

Again, we read a book, and if it is worthy 
of our time we immediately want to know 
something about the author. We image 
in our mind his likeness, and are eager to 
see his picture. We are interested in every 
scrap of news concerning him; how he 
lives, how he dresses, how he talks. We 
would peer into his house, his inner self, 
and with piercing and all-sweeping eyes 
discover the smallest detail of his person- 
ality and genius. We are not repulsed, but 

158 



EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

pleased, when he writes of himself in the 
first person and reveals himself as a lead- 
ing character in one of his stories. But 
he lives in his own house, and we may not 
enter in. 

Every man is under compulsion to go 
into his own house. He can not go into the 
house of another. His house must always 
be occupied. He can not bar the doors 
and windows and put up a notice that he 
has gone abroad. However far man may 
roam in his body, in his spirit he must 
stay at home. And his home life will rep- 
resent his real self. However he may seem 
to others on the outside, as he comes in 
contact with them he can not be a seeming 
to himself. He must be what he is. And 
in the end, whatever kind of a man he is in 
his own house he will be to others who 
come to know him. 

We are thus singled out and individual- 
ized. Our personality may be very much 
like that of our friend. But it is ours, 
nevertheless, and not his. Although he 

159 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

may understand us better than any one 
else, lie will not be able to lift the veil en- 
tirely. And whatever our problems may 
be, he can not solve them for us. He may 
help, suggest, inspire, but in the end he 
can not act. Whatever sorrows we have 
we must bear alone. He may s^nnpathize 
and condole and make the burden lighter, 
but he can not take our sorrow and bear it. 
That word of the prophet, speaking of Je- 
hovah's Servant, that He *^trod the wine- 
press alone," is only too vividly brought 
home to every man or woman who must 
toil and weep. 

In our joys it seems to be different, as 
though we could rollick around in an- 
other's house just as well as in our own. 
But the same rule holds here. Whatever 
the mirth or enjoyment, if it be anything 
real to us we must enter with it into our 
own house and there live it. Especially is 
this true in those things which appeal to 
our aesthetic and intellectual natures. The 
beautiful landscape is ours only as we look 

160 



EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

at it tlirougli the windows of our own 
liouse. The masterpiece is ours only as 
we see it with the eyes of our own soul. 
The oratorio, the musical drama, is ours 
only as it impinges on the tympanum of 
our inner ears. Others may interpret for 
us and make the meaning clear. But they 
can not see or hear for us. Into our own 
house we must go, and there make the mu- 
sic, the painting, the far-sweeping meadow 
our own. 

So of learning. The mechanic can show 
the apprentice how to use his tools, but 
he can not handle them for him. The 
teacher can unfold a subject for his stu- 
dent, but he can not carry the subject into 
the mind of the student. Apprentice and 
pupil must each go into his own house and 
there master the lessons for himself. 

As it becomes more and more apparent 
that man is a sole tenant in his own house, 
it is of some importance how he furnishes 
the house. Some furniture he will have 
inherited. But even here he will be re- 

161 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

sponsible for its arrangement. The most 
of Ms material lie will have brought, or 
will constantly be bringing from the out- 
side. And what his house ultimately is 
will turn upon his attitude to this great 
outside. 

The artist's house will exhibit his ar- 
tistic taste; the literary man's, his schol- 
arly habits; the mechanic's, his practical 
bent. So the world will be able to mark 
them off and put each in his proper class. 
But whether or not he remains in that class 
depends upon his attitude to the forces that 
play about him in nature and the world of 
thought and action, and also to what extent 
he allows his natural tendency to control 
him. The artist must ever try to realize 
his ideal. The suggestions of nature and 
of his fellow-man must form the avenue 
along which this realization is to run. So 
he is ever bringing into his house the ma- 
terial that will best enable him to furnish 
it according to the tastes demanded by his 
real self. If he is indifferent to these out- 

162 



EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

ward promptings he will soon show it in 
his inner activities. And his house will be 
no longer the natural place of entry for 
everything that is artistic and beautiful. 

We are all in this sense artists. For 
we are engaged in perfecting the highest 
of all arts, that of right living. And here 
we undervalue too greatly the necessity of 
setting our own houses in order, or, when 
we have done so, the imperativeness of 
keeping them in order. We have eyes to 
see outward, and can see, or think we can 
see, the disorder in our neighbors' houses. 
We have no eyes to see inward, and there- 
fore are blind so far as our real world is 
concerned. The outer world and the world 
of our neighbors will be colored by our own 
world. That word of Jesus concerning the 
mote and the beam is very much in point. 
We are small enough to see the tiny speck 
in our brother's eye, but not big enough 
to discover the beam in our own. 

We are limited in choosing the comforts 
and delights of life for our material houses. 

163 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

We can buy only as we have means to pay. 
But in our spiritual houses there is no 
limit to what we may possess. We can 
have what we choose. And our choice will 
depend upon the attitude we take to the 
things which are real and permanent. A 
Wallachian legend represents a peasant, 
who had performed some good deed upon 
the earth, taken to heaven for his reward. 
When asked what he would have, he chose 
a worn-out bagpipe which had been thrown 
into a comer of the heavenly treasure- 
house. With this he came back to the earth. 
The riches of the Almighty were before 
him. He had a free choice, yet he was con- 
tent with a broken instrument which had 
lost its full capacity of sound. Thus too 
often we make our choice and go forth con- 
tributing to life our weak and wheezy 
melodies, when we might have commanded 
an angel orchestra. 

There is a further suggestion of truth 
in the statement, ^* Every man went into 
his own house. '^ Unconsciously, it seems, 

164 



EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

did the inspired writer force into these 
words a meaning that reaches far beyond 
its intent. The men who went each his own 
way were the scribes and Pharisees and 
officers of the Sanhedrin ; the mechanics and 
artisans and common folk of the great city 
of Jerusalem. They represent the classes 
into which all humanity falls. Since the 
day of Jesus all men like those of His day 
are divided according to their attitude to 
Him. 

There were the indifferent. The ques- 
tion, **Can Christ come out of Galilee T' 
was a mere passing remark, with no par- 
ticular significance for them. Like the 
soldiers, casting lots for Jesus' garments, 
and indifferent both to His life and death, 
so many others remained in a state of 
apathy concerning Him. They expressed 
themselves neither for nor against Him. 
Others there were, who, at the Pharisees' 
bidding, would have done Him bodily harm. 
But they were not any more interested in 
the Pharisee's cause. They took the same 

165 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

attitude a bribed voter might take wbo 
cares neither for the interests of the man 
who buys his vote nor for the cause of good 
government. There are those, also, who 
had a conviction concerning Jesus ' merits, 
but who nevertheless remained indifferent. 
These said, * * Of a truth this is a prophet. ' ' 
But they cared little for the words of His 
prophecy or the example of His precept. 
He was simply a rivulet emptying into the 
stream of humanity, and no more to be 
recognized after His time than is a creek 
mingling its current with that of a river. 

These men, who were indifferent to 
Jesus, cared little whether He was a man 
who perverted the people or was indeed 
the Light of the world. Their houses were 
furnished with the thoughts they carried 
there, and according to these they lived. 

Next to the indifferent class stood the 
actual opposers and revilers of Jesus. 
They were headed by the scribes and 
Pharisees. They objected to Jesus' teach- 
ing because it set at variance their privi- 

166 



EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

leges and prerogatives. They did not pro- 
pose to be disturbed in their rights. One 
recourse was open to them : to cause Jesus ' 
death. This they were ready to accomplish 
by the aid of false witnesses. They were 
actually at work trying to trump up evi- 
dence against Him. They went into their 
houses, when the talking was done, carry- 
ing with them the spirit of antipathy. 
Later we find them at the foot of Jesus' 
cross. Their hostility was so great that 
even after His crucifixion they could not 
rest content, but went to feast their eyes on 
His torture and to hurl their poisoned epi- 
thets at Him. 

Among those who went each to his own 
house were also the earnestly thoughtful. 
They had a share in the discussion con- 
cerning Jesus. There were the officers who 
had been sent by the Pharisees to take 
Jesus, and, returning empty-handed, re- 
plied, ** Never man spoke as this Man.'' 
There was Nicodemus, the Pharisee, who, 
when his brother Pharisees would have con- 

167 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

demned Jesus without a hearing, asked, 
*^Doth our law judge any man before it 
hear him and know what he doeth?" 
There were those whom He had mightily 
impressed, and who said, '*When Christ 
Cometh, will He do more miracles than 
these which this Man hath done!" There 
were those, also, who were convinced con- 
cerning Jesus' identity and who declared, 
'*This is indeed the Christ." The ear- 
nestly thoughtful were quick with sym- 
pathy. They listened to the Christ until 
they understood Him. When they went 
down to their own houses they had differ- 
ent feelings and thoughts. Later on at the 
cross their eyes were full of tears and 
their hearts of anguish. They saw their 
friend and Savior dying. In the stillness 
of His death their sympathy became actual- 
ized in service. They lifted His body from 
the cross and wrapped it in linen garments 
and laid it with the spices brought by Nico- 
demus, the believing Pharisee. 

And every man went unto his own 
168 



a 



EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE. 

house. ' ' He carried with him his own food 
for thought. The food was mixed with in- 
difference or with hostility or with a will- 
ingness to hear and understand. Jesus' 
question, **What think ye of the Christ?" 
sounds to-day with all the intonations of 
the centuries behind it. Every man must 
take this question into the recesses of his 
own being. As he goes into his own house 
he must choose to answer it either in the 
spirit of disinterestedness or of disloyalty 
or of surrender and service. 



169 



XIV. 

THE INCAENATION OF IDEAS. 

Theee has always been an interesting dis- 
cussion as to whether an idea has any re- 
ality. To the question, ^^ Which is real, 
the idea of a machine or the machine it- 
self ! ' ' the answer probably would be, * * The 
machine is real.'' For there it stands; it 
is in operation; we marvel at the work it 
can perform. The idea of the machine, 
however, can not be seen. It has no ob- 
jective significance for the beholder. 

If we should push the inquiry further, 
however, and ask, **How did this machine 
come to bef we would be told that some 
man invented it. This would be an admis- 
sion that the machine did not come into ex- 
istence of itself. And if we inquired still 
further we should learn that it did not 
come into existence primarily because some 

170 



THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS. 

man or a number of men made it, but be- 
cause of an idea which originated in the 
brain of some man. So back of the ma- 
chine was the idea of the machine. The 
idea was real before the machine was 
actual. 

Now, if the machine is real, and if the 
idea of the machine as it existed in the 
mind of the inventor was real, what is the 
answer to the question, ^* Which is the more 
real, the idea or the machine f ' ' This is no 
idle question. Men's minds have become 
dizzy as they have given it thought. Is it 
perhaps possible that the objects which 
we see: trees, houses, birds, men, are not 
real after all, but that only the ideas of 
these objects have reality? For instance, 
here is a house. It bums down and ceases 
to exist. The idea of that house, however, 
still remains. All the burnt and ruined 
hills and levels of San Francisco are not 
sufficient to blot out the picture of the city 
as it existed before the morning of April 
18, 1906. 

171 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

We know a man. He dies. Our idea or 
impression or memory of that man still 
lives. We continue to know liim as he 
was in life. Some of our most real as well 
as tender impressions to-day are the mem- 
ories of those we laid to rest years and 
years ago. 

Or take a statue or a picture or a flower. 
It presents an idea of beauty that pos- 
sesses our soul. When the statue falls 
down and is marred, or the picture fades 
and becomes dim, or the flower withers and 
dies, the idea of its beauty endures and is 
still real to us. 

Or take a good man or a good child. The 
man is honest and sober, the child is at- 
tentive and obedient. Both the man and 
the child give us an idea of goodness that 
is appealing. But to-morrow the man may 
be incomprehensibly guilty of some wrong 
act, and the child may fret and annoy us 
beyond endurance. The goodness of the 
individual man and boy is gone, but the 
idea of goodness remains. For we should 

172 



THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS. 

have to admit that the goodness of yes- 
terday was a real thing; and if real in 
them, it can be real in others. Hence the 
idea of goodness would have universal 
reality. 

So we can continue with other illustra- 
tions. The fact which underlies this line 
of argument has led philosophers to main- 
tain seriously that only the idea is real, 
all else is copy or shadow. The idea of 
man remains, the individual man disap- 
pears ; the idea of beauty remains, beauty 
itself is destroyed; the idea of goodness 
remains, goodness itself is never perfect. 
Therefore that which remains is alone 
truly real. 

Here is a fact we can not dispute, and 
the more we contemplate it the more it 
possesses us. But if we should allow this 
thought to dominate our thinking as it 
dominated the thinking of the great Greek 
philosopher and of many other profound 
thinkers since his day, we should lose our- 
selves in the clouds as they did. For if 

173 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

we make only the idea of beauty real, we 
shall end by having nothing beautiful 
upon the earth. Why bother about having 
actual beauty when this would be unreal! 
If we make only the idea of goodness real, 
we shall have no goodness upon the earth. 
Why should we try to be good, when try- 
ing to be good would be unreal and we 
could satisfy ourselves by merely thinking 
about goodness. If we make the idea of 
Grod alone real, we shall have an unreal 
God ; hence no God at all. So why worship 
an unreal God or try to conform our lives 
to his commands. For even worship and 
obedience would be unreal. Only the ideas 
of worship and obedience could have any 
reality. 

The fallacy in this method of reasoning 
is the failure to recognize that life is some- 
thing more than mere thinking. It com- 
prehends doing as well. Our thinking 
must ever be related to our doing. Thought 
must be put into practice. Otherwise it 
is nothing. A thought or an idea can have 

174 



THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS. 

reality only as it finds expression in some 
personality. We can have a thousand 
ideas or conceptions, but if we do not give 
them shape and form in some tangible way, 
they can have no reality. 

Here, for example, is the thought of a 
mother's love. This is only an idea. We 
may discuss it, grow eloquent over it, ex- 
haust the possibilities of tongue and pen 
to describe it. Yet as a mere idea it would 
mean little or nothing to one who never 
realized what is the love of woman. But 
let the idea of a mother's love have rela- 
tion to the personality of some mother; let 
it assume visible form; let it be<?ome in- 
carnated, a mother wearing herself out at 
the bedside of her child, or battling against 
the flames or in the water, giving up her 
own life for that of her child, if need be, 
and the idea of a mother's love assumes 
some meaning, it becomes real. 

Liberty is an idea. We may sing songs 
to it, we may teach it and preach it, and 
yet it will not mean much, only as an idea. 

175 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

But let a nation become oppressed or en- 
chained, and the idea of liberty assumes 
a concrete form. It becomes flesh and 
blood in every man and woman struggling 
for freedom. And the men will march out 
and stand behind their guns and make their 
ideas speak in thunder tones and the 
women will remain at home and mold bul- 
lets and weave bandages and give expres- 
sion to their ideas in every step they take, 
in every word they utter, in every look that 
flashes from their eyes. 

"What is religion but the ideas of good- 
ness and purity incarnated in men and 
women living by the force of righteous 
convictions? What is education but the 
ideas of truth and honesty incarnated in 
the minds and souls of men who would find 
the true and the real! Temples are built 
and books are published and pictures are 
painted to give expression to the ideas 
which have become incarnated and live and 
move and have their being in the head and 
heart of some personality. 

176 



THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS. 

So an idea is real. But it is real only 
as it has relation to some personality. 
And that personality must be a worthy 
representative of his idea. As Emerson 
has said, '* Ideas must work through the 
brains and arms of good and brave men, or 
they are no better than dreams." Many 
are the examples which prove this truth. 
Rousseau, the great champion of an ideal 
education, allowed his children to go un- 
clothed and unfed as paupers and beggars 
on the streets. His idea of education was 
not incarnated, it had no relation to a 
worthy life. He is only a type of the 
French thinker of the eighteenth century, 
whose high and lofty ideas had no vis- 
ible unfolding in flesh and blood. They 
preached a ** gospel of human perfecti- 
bility;" they lived a life of brutal immo- 
rality. Jesus characterized all such when 
He told the Pharisees that their life of 
precept had no counterpart in their life 
of example. Their ideas took form, but it 
was the form of dead men's bones and all 

177 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

uncleanness. Incarnation, on the other 
hand, means life and purity. Great ideas 
become real, therefore, in great souls. 

Heine wrote a lyric in which he repre- 
sents an ordinary fellow — awkward, list- 
less, irresolute^ — who suddenly is changed 
into a spirited and noble young man upon 
the approach of his lady love. This is an 
allegory, in which the poet tries to show 
that he is at his best only in the presence 
of his muse. When she comes, his thoughts 
are charged with life. They breathe and 
speak. So commanding men of all ages 
have declared that it was not they, but an 
idea flowing through them, which caused 
them to perform their almost superhuman 
deeds. 

It is nature ^s way to wait for the man 
who is ready for the incarnation. And 
then the Word becomes flesh. Often na- 
ture must wait a long time for the coming 
of such a man. Ages before Luther did 
men believe that the just shall live by faith 
and that man may speak to God without 

178 



THE INCAENATION OF IDEAS. 

the mediation of a priest. But not until 
Luther did these ideas become incarnated. 
Then, facing his accusers and judges, he 
said, **Here I stand; I can not do other- 
wise; so help me God!'* Long before Lin- 
coln did men preach that all men should 
be physically free. But not until Lincoln 
came did this idea become incarnated. 
Then, facing the world, he said, ^^A house 
divided against itself can not stand. I be- 
lieve this Government can not endure half 
slave and half free." The ideas of Luther 
and Lincoln were the realities in these 
great movements ; the Protestant Reforma- 
tion and the Emancipation Proclamation 
were only the incidents. For in their ideas 
the thought and hope of the ages were 
crystallized and expressed. The Word be- 
came flesh. 

Erasmus tells us that in his day ^^ there 
was a project to have a congress of kings 
to enter into mutual agreements to pre- 
serve peace with each other and through 
Europe.'* In the beginning of the six- 

179 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

teenth century, four hundred years ago, 
the idea of universal peace was floating 
over Europe, and yet but yesterday we 
closed one of the most sanguinary wars of 
history. This idea has not yet become in- 
carnated. But some day a man will ap- 
pear who will gather in himself the hope 
and expectation of the centuries, and then 
nations will learn to war no more. 

So we come to the real meaning of the 
truth, **The Word became flesh." When- 
ever we speak of God we intuitively asso- 
ciate with Him certain ideas. We say God 
is good, God is just, God is love. So we 
speak of the ideas of goodness, of justice, 
and of righteousnes. Probably the first of 
these ideas, that of goodness, predominates 
in our minds. It is in fact inclusive of all 
the others. As goodness is an idea with 
us, so it is an idea with God. It is con- 
ceivable that God could entertain this idea 
as any one of us could entertain an idea, 
keeping it entirely to ourselves, turning 
it over in our minds and finding in it in- 

180 



THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS. 

finite enjoyment. It is not our nature, how- 
ever, to keep anything good or great to 
ourselves, unless there be a selfish motive 
back of it and we desire to reap some ma- 
terial gain therefrom. And even then, to 
attain our ends, we must impart our idea 
to others. So it is not in the nature of 
God to keep His goodness to Himself, nor 
could He do so if the idea of goodness were 
to have any meaning for us. God's idea 
of goodness, therefore, must become in- 
carnated. It can exist only in relation to 
some personality. And that personality 
must be a most worthy representative of 
goodness. 

As we cast our eye over the events of 
Old Testament history we find that God's 
goodness always has relation to some per- 
sonality. Enoch walked with God, and he 
was not, for God took him. Abraham 
trusted God, and his faith was counted for 
righteousness. Elijah spoke with the Al- 
mighty, and was taken to heaven in a flame 
of fire. These narrations and many others 

181 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

are the attempts of tlie early Hebrew 
writers to show how God's goodness be- 
came flesh and blood in some personality, 
and in this way, although imperfectly, re- 
vealed God to man. If God was working 
in and through man after this manner, and 
as he is the supreme type of perfection, it 
was inevitable that there must come a mo- 
ment when God would reveal Himself in 
the ideal incarnation. This moment burst 
with all its fullness upon an expectant 
world. The Word became flesh, and Jesus 
Christ walked the valleys and hills of Pal- 
estine the embodiment of goodness, purity, 
and truth. 

As we contemplate this thought of God 
entering the human race in the person of 
Jesus Christ, we must not forget that, 
while the incarnation to us is an event in 
time, with God it was an eternal idea. The 
ancient Hebrews had many a f oregleam of 
this idea becoming a fact. They were con- 
vinced that God must come to the earth in 
visible form. So they represented Him as 

182 



THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS. 

living in a tabernacle where His name 
dwelt. Or they represented Him as the 
Shekinah, the symbol of the Divine Pres- 
ence, which rested in the shape of a cloud 
or a visible light over the mercy seat. This 
was God's glory dwelling in a tabernacle. 
The writer of John's Gospel uses this same 
imagery. **The Word became flesh" in 
Jesus Christ and ''tabernacled among us, 
and we beheld His glory, the glory of the 
only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth.'' God in the Old Testament is 
unseen; He dwells in a tabernacle; His 
glory shines round about. God in the New 
Testament is seen; He tabernacles with 
men, and in Him they behold God's glory. 
So Paul declares that, although **no man 
had ever seen God," yet **the only begot- 
ten Son hath made Him known." 

We must also remember that the Incar- 
nation was God's idea, or word, coming 
into the world in the form of a man. God 
was already in the world. His Spirit was 
all-pervading. He must give His idea 

183 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

form in the personality of a man. And 
not of a man who must, but who might do 
His will. Jesus, therefore, came into the 
world a man in all points as we are, except 
without sin. And He was without sin, not 
because it was made impossible for Him to 
sin, but simply because He chose to remain 
pure. If He could not sin, then His temp- 
tation has no significance, for only one who 
can sin can be tempted. He was free to 
disobey God as we are. He willed to do 
God's will. This was the incomprehensible 
miracle which puzzled His disciples as 
much, if not more, than it puzzles us. 
That He, the Son of God, should also 
choose to be the Son of man, coming into 
and remaining upon the earth to suffer its 
temptations and trials, was to them the 
deepest mystery. They saw the grandeur, 
however, and the overpowering nobility of 
Jesus' sacrifice. Paul, overcome by the un- 
selfishness of such a love, gives it expres- 
sion in the words. Behold the Christ, *^who, 
though He was rich, yet for your sakes be- 

184 



THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS. 

came poor, that ye tlirougli His poverty 
might become rich.'' 

From the divine and from the human 
side, therefore, the Incarnation was ideal. 
It was all that God and Christ could do. 
It was all that needed to be done. Like a 
mighty bridge which stretches high above 
an angry current permits a man to cross 
from one side to the other, so the Incarna- 
tion spans this sinful world. With the aid 
of Jesus Christ man comes to God. The 
New Testament never allows us to forget 
this fact. God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto Himself. Because ye are sons, 
God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into 
your hearts, crying, Abba, Father, who 
was the brightness of God's glory, the ex- 
press image of His person, the Word be- 
come flesh which tabernacled among us full 
of grace and truth. Eternal love and eter- 
nal life became flesh in Jesus Christ. 

What is the significance to us personally 
of this great truth? It means that God is 
an eternal possibility of incarnation, and 

185 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

that man has a permanent capability of in- 
carnation. What God's intention was for 
Jesus Christ it is for the whole race. God 
is forever on the side of man, and earnestly 
desires that he be saved. Hence God's 
word will become flesh in man if he in- 
tend that it shall. Through Jesus of Naza- 
reth He calls him to be worthy, so that 
goodness and purity and truth can flow in 
him and find expression. 



186 



XV. 

THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

To womanhood Jesus paid His noblest 
tributes. The Grospel narrative would be 
devoid of many a beautiful passage and 
bereft of some of its most inciting and ir- 
resistible truths had it not been for the 
occasions women offered Jesus for preach- 
ing His sermons. The story of the woman 
who spent all her substance for healing is 
full of suggestion. 

She shows us that Jesus never was so 
busily engaged that He could not stop to 
help in case of need. She was healed by 
Him as He was going to the house of 
Jairus, whose little girl lay at the point 
of death. The emergency was a great one ; 
the father feared the Master would not 
come in time ; Jesus was hurrying to reach 
the sick-room. And yet, as He feels that 

187 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

tug at His garments He knows there is an- 
other helpless soul imploring His aid, and, 
seemingly forgetful about the dying child. 
He stays His steps to give the relief 
sought. 

This woman shows us also that real faith 
grows out of a sense of need. She had been 
ailing twelve years, had suffered much of 
many physicians, had spent all her money, 
yet had not become better, but rather 
worse. Sick and poor and friendless, this 
was her condition. But as soon as she 
heard of Jesus she came to Him. He had 
helped others, He could help her. 

We shall make a mistake if we attribute 
this act to the despair of a woman who had 
lost all and who could well afPord another 
venture. Great trial and sorrow often 
drive one from God rather than to Him, 
and despair never leads up the heights. 
After every great disaster, when homes are 
made desolate, the tide of men's feelings 
runs like a mill-race, with all the power of 
gravity tugging at it down into the depths 

188 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

of despair. Only the anchor of faith will 
hold against the counter-streams of sorrow 
and distress. Sailors know they will have 
need of an anchor, and so they prepare 
for the emergency. Out of this same sense 
of need grows real faith, which like an an- 
chor steadies men on the sea of life and 
holds them from the currents that run on 
the rocks or into the whirlpool. 

As this woman had real faith, she shows 
us further that nothing can hinder such a 
faith. It was a mountain-moving faith, the 
kind of faith Jesus tried to instill into 
His disciples. There was the mountain of 
social ostracism. The Mosaic law ban- 
ished such as she beyond the usual walks 
of life. The sticklers for that law would 
have been only too quick to stone or other- 
wise punish her. But her faith told her 
such a law could not be just; that He who 
would violate a similar law to cure on the 
Sabbath day would also set this one aside. 
So with the words trembling upon her lips, 
**If I can but touch His garments,*' she 

189 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

walked right over the toweling height of 
her ostracism. 

There was the niountain, also, of friend- 
lessness. She was now a panper. Poverty 
added to ostracism heaves up a mighty 
barrier. Such a barrier hung over this 
unfortunate woman wherever she walked, 
threatening to fall upon and crush her. 
But she lifted this mountain and flung it 
into the sea when she heard of Jesus. For 
she said within herself, **If I can but touch 
His garments, I shall be healed." Health 
was more than riches. 

Immediately, however, another mountain 
rose before her, higher and more impass- 
able than the other two. It was the moun- 
tain the multitude about Jesus formed, and 
which made approach to Him by such a 
weak and frail woman almost impossible. 
Let us understand what this mass of hu~ 
manity was. Matthew says the people 
were literally storming Jesus, Mark de- 
clares they were knocking and pushing 
against Him, Luke tells us it was suffocat- 

190 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

ing to be in that crowd. The disciples, 
when Jesus turned and asked, *^Who 
touched My garments ?" rebuked their 
Master and said, **Thou seest the multi- 
tude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou, 
Who touched Mef It was preposterous 
in their eyes for Jesus to think He could 
tell the individual touch of any one in that 
crowd. 

Imagine, therefore, this woman, dis- 
turbed in mind as well as weakened in 
body, throwing herself into that turbulent 
and jostling crowd. Consider the tram- 
pling of feet, the shouting of voices, the 
dust coming up into her face, the sun beat- 
ing down on her head ; look at her fearing 
and trembling lest her condition be dis- 
covered and she be immediately pounced 
upon by the unfeeling crowd. And yet, see 
her pushing onward with superhuman 
strength — superhuman because she had 
faith — ^now thrown to one side, now to the 
other, now backward, now effectually 
stopped by the wall of human flesh, but 

191 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

still struggling onward, her hands out- 
stretched, her lips muttering that one re- 
frain of hope and joy, '*If I but touch His 
garments I shall be made whole." And 
then see the mountain of humanity roll 
away before her as she comes to her 
Savior. 

From this incident we learn further that 
real blessing comes only as we openly ac- 
knowledge the benefit received. When she 
touched Jesus' garments and experienced 
the unutterable joy of relief she fell back 
to go unnoticed as she came. Already was 
she beginning to lose herself in that crowd. 
But the moment Jesus asked, **Who 
touched My garments!" she stopped, and 
when she saw that Jesus could not be put 
off with the assurance that no one in par- 
ticular had touched Him, she came trem- 
blingly and with fear to confess what she 
had done. 

To give her this opportunity, Jesus 
framed His question. He was not asking 
for information, no more than He was 

192 



rr 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

when, after the disciples had been disput- 
ing who was to be the greatest among them, 
He asked, **What was it that ye disputed 
by the way?" or when walking with those 
other disciples on the way to Emmaus He 
said, '*What manner of communications 
are these which ye have, and why are ye 
sadl'* For the sole purpose of giving this 
woman an opportunity to make humble and 
open and full confession of her faith did 
Jesus ask that question, **Who touched My 
garments r' 

It would have been but a barren blessing 
to her had she gone away in silence. On 
the other hand, it was never a matter of 
indifference to Jesus whether or not those 
whom He helped acknowledged His service. 
On one occasion He sent ten lepers who 
came to Him for healing on an errand to 
test their faith, and as they went they were 
cleansed. But only one returned to give 
thanks and glorify God. And Jesus, look- 
ing upon him, said, '^Were there not ten 
cleansed, but where are the nine ! ' ' They 
^^ 193 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

liad gone off benefited, but not blessed. To 
the one alone Jesus said, ** Arise, go tby 
way ; tby faith hath made thee whole. ^ ' So 
to this woman, when she fell before Him to 
confess. He said, ^* Daughter, thy faith 
hath made thee whole; go in peace." 
Then, and only then, could she leave Him 
with the happiness and peace of a newly 
found life. The sustenance and healing we 
receive every day from God are benefits; 
they do not become blessings until we re- 
turn thanks to Him and receive His bene- 
diction. 

But we have not exhausted the truth this 
woman teaches us. There were himdreds 
of men and women touching Jesus as they 
thronged Him; there was only one touch 
that He felt. That touch was **the touch 
of faith." From the day when multitudes 
gathered to hear the great Teacher the 
world has been touching Jesus' garments. 
How close the contact has been we little 
consider as we move along our daily path. 
But take that figure out of our life, and the 

194 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

world will become as barren and desolate 
as are the hills and valleys of His native 
land from which He was driven. 

This is no mere figure of speech. Civili- 
zation, with Christ at its head, has gone 
marching on. Its one impetus has been the 
possibility and privilege of touching Him. 

Were there no power to draw men to- 
gether so that human prejudice and hatred, 
human love and patience, could find ex- 
pression and the lessons of common expe- 
rience be taught, there would be little in- 
centive for living. It would be just as well 
under such circumstances for men to hide 
themselves in caves and jungles and eke 
out their solitary existence until life should 
ebb away. There is this power, however, 
and as men touch each other there comes 
the spur to life. But if there were not 
some high ideal and worthy motive by 
which men are drawn together, the contact 
and commimion of life would be but little 
better than an idle game. This incentive 
and this motive converge in the Christ. 

195 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

Men have eagerly run to Him and are 
thronging Him to-day as much as tliey 
thronged Him nineteen hundred years ago. 

In this crowd we find the philosopher and 
theologian, the artist and the man of let- 
ters. They have heard that a virtue pro- 
ceeds from Jesus. The record of past his- 
tory is not to be discredited. For nineteen 
centuries there has been only one Figure 
who was great and powerful enough to at- 
tract and hold the interest and thought of 
men. So we find men who represent the 
intellectual and spiritual and aesthetic side 
of mankind in the multitudes which have 
touched Jesus. But they have too often 
typified the merely curious or indifferent 
or sneering or criticising element in every 
crowd. They brushed the very garments 
of Jesus, but He did not ask, *'Who 
touched Me?'' For He felt none of them 
touching Him. 

So in Church and State, in school and 
home, Jesus has been the one great center 
of attraction. Ecclesiastics and statesmen, 

196 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

teachers and parents, have been thronging 
Him to draw upon the institutions they 
represent His virtue. Here He has stood, 
and a crown has been offered Him. But 
this crown has too often been the very one 
Jesus in His lifetime refused. It was not 
offered with an intelligent understanding 
of what His true mission was. These lead- 
ers would have crowned Him externally, 
so that He might give dignity and power 
to the provinces over which they presided, 
when He asked only that they receive Him 
into their lives and encourage others to do 
likewise. They pushed and tugged as they 
touched Him, but He asked not, **Who 
touched Me?" For theirs was not the 
touch of faith. 

So individual men and women have been 
storming Jesus throughout the ages. They 
have touched Him as they have come in 
contact with godly men and women, whose 
influence is a divine blessing and from 
whose lives the Christ spirit proceeds. 
But their lives have not had an impetus up- 

197 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

ward. For as they looked upon these per- 
sons they have always found the frailties 
which make men and women too truly 
human. They have been quick to take an 
inventory of human mistakes and short- 
comings rather than to make an investment 
of earnest and righteous effort. They have 
hidden the talent that was given them, for 
they said, **The Master is a hard one, He 
will take account of every weakness that 
besets us and every failure we make. So 
why try to increase our talent." The 
riches of the Kingdom were in reach of 
their grasp, but they did not stretch out 
the hand of faith, and Jesus did not know 
they touched Him. 

So have men touched the Master as they 
have read the literary treasures of past 
and present ages. A man of learning 
wrote a chapter entitled, **The Lost 
Bible." He pictured a morning when men 
discovered that the Bible had been taken 
out of the world. Not only was the Sacred 
Book gone, but also every passage in every 

198 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

other book which had been inspired by 
the one Book. As they took up the volumes 
which had molded civilization in estab- 
lished forms of righteousness, they found 
that these books had blank spaces on al- 
most every page, that the thread of the nar- 
rative was broken. There was little mean- 
ing in what remained. The power that had 
inspired the book had been withdrawn. So 
they cried in distress, **Give us back our 
Bible.'' 

It would be too elementary to discuss the 
influence the Bible has had upon literature. 
Suffice it to say that the reading multitude 
must throng the Master on every literary 
avenue and highway. They can not help 
but touch Him here if they read anything 
worthy, for His Spirit is all pervasive. If 
they do not hear Him say, **Who touched 
My garments!'' they may know they have 
not touched Him in faith. 

Then in established religion itself the 
multitudes throng the Master. On the 
great roads worn smooth and hard by nine- 

199 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

teen hundred years ' tramping of Christian 
travelers, how truly can it be said, **The 
whole multitude presses upon Him to 
touch Him, for they know that virtue goeth 
out of Him." And yet, how many indi- 
vidual communicants are there who hear 
Jesus say, *^Who touched My garments?" 

Men get into the habit of going to church 
just as they acquire other habits. While 
this is a habit always to be encouraged, it 
is not one of unmixed good for the indi- 
vidual so habituated. For he may get no 
nearer to the spirit of the Master than did 
those men who were brushing the very gar- 
ments of Jesus on that Galilean road. 

Some men go to church merely to see 
what is going on. They listen to the music 
and the prayers and the sermon, and go 
through all the outward motions of wor- 
ship, but they never get into the spirit of 
the service. These are they who followed 
Jesus curiously, to hear what He might 
say or see what He might do ; who touched 
His very garments, but who were not ar- 

200 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

rested by the question, **Wlio took hold 
of Me?'' 

Other men get into the habit of going to 
church in a hypercritical or tentative atti- 
tude. They are the self-constituted judges 
of what ought to take place in Church..- 
They are experts on the form of worship, 
understand how much or how little of 
ritual should be used, take in at once what 
is wrong with the ushering or the singing 
or the serving of tables generally. They 
soon become professional sermon tasters, 
as there are professional tasters of tea and 
of other commodities, whose business is 
to do with the selling value rather than the 
nourishing qualities thereof. They are apt 
to judge the whole by a very little part, 
and are in a danger they do not realize, 
the danger that besets all professional 
tasters, whose sense of taste after a period 
of years begins to deceive them, so that 
everything tastes the same. 

Such critics of all that goes on in Church 
are like those who thronged the Master, to 

201 



SPIEITUAL VALUES. 

see whether He would violate the law or 
to ask Him questions in order to entrap 
Him. Jesus never stopped one of them 
with His question, ^^Who touched MeV* 
for He never felt them tugging at His 
garments. 

Then there are those who go to church 
because they feel they ought to. The train- 
ing they have received, the profession they 
make, the position in life they take, force 
upon them a certain obligation to attend 
church. But during the service they are 
easily distracted, their minds wander, like 
water running down hill, to their engage- 
ments of the past week and to the plans 
for the future; they are casting mental 
balances of their business ventures; they 
are considering what they are going to 
get out of life, whether it be a financial 
gain or a social prominence or a satisfac- 
tion for mental efforts expended. These 
are real disciples of the Master. They rep- 
resent the human bundles of weakness who 
followed Him closely, but whose minds 

202 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

were continually wandering from their 
service of Him to their own worldly pros- 
pects ; who were saying to Him, * ^ Master, 
we have left all and followed Thee; what 
shall we have therefore f ^ ' who argued with 
considerable heat who was going to be 
greatest in His Kingdom. 

And yet such as these were the only ma- 
terial Jesus had with which to build up His 
Kingdom. They were the only ones He 
could send to preach His gospel and carry 
on His work; He lost none of them, we 
read, except the son of perdition, even 
although at times they left Him. But how 
often was He grieved in His soul because 
of their weakness and listlessness ! How 
patient He had to be with them ! how gen- 
tle, in order to bring out their true selves ! 
"With them Jesus built a structure of un- 
shakable foundation, yet we can not help 
but feel how much more successful He 
would have been could He have counted 
confidently on the unreserved service and 
following of His disciples! And to-day, 

203 



SPIRITUAL VALUES. 

how mucli grander and more noble would 
life be if all who call upon His name would 
do so in absolute surrender and consecra- 
tion to His service I 

** Touching Me every day, and yet at 
arm's length from Me." This was the 
comment of Jesus upon His followers. 
Thronging Him everywhere, and yet sepa- 
rate from Him. This is the verdict of his- 
tory upon those whose surroundings have 
been most benefited by Him. They have 
touched Him, but not with the touch of 
faith, and He has not stopped to bless 
them. 

Many there were in crowds about Jesus 
who never came in contact with Him. 
Others there were who were not of His 
immediate following, but who, when they 
heard of Him, came to Him with the touch 
of faith. No wonder, therefore, that Jesus 
marveled and said, **I have not found such 
faith, no, not even in Israel. '* No wonder, 
also, that He added, ** Verily I say unto 
you, Many shall come from the east and 

204 



THE TOUCH OF FAITH. 

from the west who have no inherited right 
to the Kingdom, but they shall sit down 
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, while 
the children of the Kingdom will not be 
permitted to enter. For behold, there are 
last which shall be first, and first which 
shall be last" 



205 



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